It's All Fun and Games
by midnightjen
Summary: Things would have been so much easier if he'd just remember that he hated her. Or if he could remember that was supposed to matter. AU from the end of season 1.
1. Chapter 1

**a/n:** I know it's been a while but real life was getting in the way but this, this just needed to be written. Takes place at the beginning of season 2 but one in which Catherine is behind the attack on Juliette out of revenge and Adalind put her efforts into regaining her powers. Its intended, I think, to be four parts, but we'll see how that goes. Let me know your thoughts.

 _It began…_

'Wh-what are you doing?' He smacked at her hand. 'Stop that.'

'You and I are going to have sex,' she repeated, this time she said it slowly like that would somehow make sense of this whole thing. And her fingers, which had been tugging at the buttons of his shirt were now nimbly making quick work of her own.

His hand whipped up to cover his eyes and he growled, 'Hell no.' Of course, with his hand covering his eyes he couldn't actually see if she'd stopped undressing and started to redress so her spread his fingers and took a peek. Which was a terrible idea as she'd in fact finished with her shirt and his peek had been timed perfectly to watch her shirt fall down her arms until she flung it away into the depths of his living room.

'Yes,' she stated firmly, and her hands were back to his shirt and why had he not already just shot her?

'Adalind,' he snapped, this time he didn't bother to gently slap her hands away, he took her by the shoulders (and didn't – DIDN'T. Really – notice how smooth her skin was) and shoved her away from him. It was unfortunate that just pushed her further into his house and away from the open front door that had somehow ended up at his back and, hang on, when exactly had he kicked it closed?

'Nick,' she said, voice slightly mocking, and he did not find that hot. At all. Jesus what was wrong with him and why, why was she starting on the button of her jeans and toeing off her shoes.

'Get out,' he told her but his voice didn't come out as sharp and stern as he was intending and he knew she noticed because she stopped working on her pants to come back to him and he smacked her hands away again but somehow she'd gotten all of the buttons undone and they ended up in a tug of war as she tried to divest him of his shirt and he tried valiantly not to let her.

'You owe me,' she told him, and it was such a ridiculous statement that he stopped fighting her to gape at her and unintentionally gave her the opportunity to go for his belt.

'What?' he demanded, regaining control enough to smack her hand away and try to redo his belt but she somehow got hold of the buckle and pulled and his hips twisted slightly with the movement and his shoving her away only helped her this time because the force gave her enough space and momentum to yank his belt clean out of his jeans, dropping his badge to the floor and his (thankfully empty) holster along with it.

'You stole my power,' she reminded him and suddenly she was up close again and her hands were tugging at the hem of his t-shirt and he found himself lifting his arms under her direction while his mind was trying to work out how stealing her powers gave her the right to come into his house in the middle of the night demanding sex. 'Boots. Off. Now.'

'No. No and still no,' he shot back. She shrugged at him and stepped back, hands going to the waistband of her own jeans and he watched her, eyes trained warily on her hands as they lowered the zipper and started to ease the denim off her hips and down her thighs. She shimmied out of them and the kicked them the rest of the way. He thought they might have landed on the back of the couch but he didn't turn to look because Adalind was standing in his house in her underwear and this was just not a scenario he was prepared to deal with.

Also, this confident display was kind of turning him on.

Adalind knew exactly what she wanted, and she had just walked on into his house shedding clothes and demanding he bend to her will. As if the last time they saw each other he hadn't tried to kill her and forced her to swallow some of his blood in order to save Hank from her crazy love spell.

Distracted, as he was, by the smooth curves and delicate navy blue lace she managed to get close again and this time when her hands went for the button of his jeans his traitorous hands went to her hips and he'd meant to shove her away again but she played dirty, rising up on her toes to kiss the underside of his jaw while her fingers yanked down his zipper.

He didn't tilt his head to giver access and he sure as hell didn't moan. Much.

'What,' he rasped and broke off his question because she'd slipped her hand inside his pants and she was so warm and her mouth was still doing things to the sensitive skin of his neck and it took him a couple of tries to form a coherent thought. 'What does that have to do with anything?'

'Blood,' she told him, her words a sultry pur, 'took my power away. Sex, is going to get it back.'

That probably should have alarmed him more than it did, but he could kind of follow her logic and what with her lips burning a trail down his chest and her hands making quick work of shoving his jeans and underwear out of her way his brain wasn't exactly fully functional.

He did manage to gasp out, 'Why would I want to help you with that?'

And hang on, when did his lips join the party? Because while she tasted amazing, he didn't remember giving them permission to do a little exploration of their own.

She grabbed one of his hands on her hips and it didn't take much effort on her part to have him sliding her underwear down.

'Oh, Nick,' she laughed, 'this is going to be fun.'

And then she somehow managed to hook one of her legs behind his and pulled while she leaned into him and his feet were still in their boots, his jeans and underwear around his knees and so he went down without much protest, back hitting the rug in the hallway with an oomph that almost knocked the air from his lungs but he'd helped her rid herself of her underwear and he was already so hard it was just too easy for her to sink down onto him.

And god damn if she wasn't right. Though he wasn't sure fun quite summed it up.


	2. Chapter 2

**a/n:** Thank you so much for all the wonderful reviews! I feel like I should clarify that I have no real idea how long this is going to be and that the chapters will likely get longer as Nick and Adalind's relationship becomes more of an actual relationship. Also, important side note: I do not condone cheating. At all. Which makes this story horribly complicated but I toed the line in Necessary Sins and I'm going to try as best I can here.

'You shot me!'

'It's barely a scratch,' Nick scoffed.

'There's a hole in my shirt!'

'You were in the way,' he said calmly.

'In the,' Adalind trailed off into a snarl, made more impressive now that she was a hexenbiest again and could woge. 'I was standing here, minding my own business, and you shot me!'

'Why are you even here?' Nick asked, holstering his weapon and approaching Adalind. He took her hands and gently pulled them away so he could inspect the bloody gash in her side. He had put a hole in her shirt and now it was a bloody hole, but it really was just a scratch. It wouldn't even need stiches.

'Client,' she told him and then hissed when his fingers gently probed the wound. She slapped at his hands, but he knocked them away and instead she moved to grip his arm. 'Ouch,' she complained.

Nick rolled his eyes. 'You've had worse,' he told her, unsympathetic to her plight which earned him a smack to the shoulder and a twitch of the lips that might have been a smile, but it was gone before he could point it out.

'What were you shooting at anyway?' Adalind turned around and they both looked at the dead man lying in the hallway behind her. There was a knife still gripped in his hand and a very large pool of blood spilling out onto the floor from the bullet he'd taken to the chest. 'Wesen?'

'Nah,' Nick shook his head and he might have gone on to mention what this particular low-life had done but then what she'd said earlier caught up with him. 'You don't have any clients in this building.'

Nick sincerely doubted there was anyone living in this building that could afford Adalind or anyone at her firm. It was exactly the kind of place you'd expect to find someone suspected of stabbing three women hiding out. It was not the kind of place you expected to find a well-to-do hexenbiest lawyer. The idea of Adalind in such a building, especially when he'd come out of the stairwell just in time to watch her step out of an apartment and right into the path of their killer, who had seen Nick and Adalind and it didn't take a genius (or a cop) to know he'd thought she'd make an excellent hostage – or another victim.

It had all happened so quick, Nelson Fox had barely flinched in Adalind's direction when Nick shot him. There hadn't been any time to consider other options. Nick had seen someone pull a knife on Adalind (again) and he'd reacted.

He hated that he'd reacted to save her life. Things were so much less complicated when she wasn't around.

'Not my client,' Adalind explained, turning back to him with a dark look. 'My mother's.'

Nick winced. The last time he'd seen Adalind they'd been standing over her mother's body. He'd been the one bleeding then, from a nasty gash on the back of his head. He'd gotten that when Catherine Schade used her power to slam him back through the glass doors out onto her patio. The knife wound to the shoulder had come later. He'd gone through those doors after pissing Catherine off for threatening to do to her what he'd done to Adalind. He'd been a distraction. His own mother had followed through on the threat but, much like her daughter, Catherine hadn't let that go without a fight. Even without powers, she'd gone after his mother. It hadn't ended well.

Adalind had walked in just in time to see his mother shove a knife into Catherine's chest. She'd woged, his mother had reacted, and Nick had ended up with another of his mother's knives imbedded in his shoulder when he'd put himself between her and Adalind.

That had taken some explaining. Especially when he'd moved without conscious thought, grabbing Adalind and pulling her close as he spun to put his back to his mother, taking the knife meant for Adalind nice and deep in his left shoulder.

The fact he'd grunted, 'Should have let you take the knife,' twenty seconds later had probably confused his mother more and now they were standing, far too close together, in the hallway of a rundown apartment building, over another dead body. At least this time it wasn't anyone they knew. And the bleeding wasn't all that bad.

Adalind looked up at him, probably to tell him how this entire thing was his fault (and it kind of was) and he realised that his hand was still under her shirt, not so much inspecting her wound as gently gripping her side as his traitorous thumb stroked her skin. She shivered and he wanted to tell himself it was the shock of being shot, that it was cold in the hallway, any excuse that wasn't the simple fact that his touch was a spark between them that hadn't been dampened by an evening of ridiculously hot sex.

There was a body on the floor behind them and Juliette was fresh out of hospital, almost fully recovered from whatever Catherine had done to her, and yet that didn't stop him from dipping that thumb lower until it slipped beneath the hem of her designer jeans.

'Nick.'

'Adalind.'

'Do you need me to kill someone?' he asked, addressing their previous conversation and not the fact that his other hand had slid around her waist to press against her lower back.

'I've got it,' she replied, seeming amused by his words even as she was intrigued by his gently manoeuvring her closer until she was pressed into him, her own hands slid up his arms until she could grip his collar.

'I'm sorry I shot you.'

Adalind shot him a knowing smile, gently tugging him down to meet her. 'No, you're not.'

He really wasn't.

Things might have gotten out of control after that, and Nick had no idea how he'd go about explaining that the missing time between the shooting and calling it in had been occupied with him making out with a woman not his girlfriend. Two feet from a dead body. But just as her lips met his, a uniform rounded the corner, gun out to assess the reports of shots fired and reality set in.

'Detective?' the uniform called out. 'Everything, alright?'

Against his better judgement, Nick pressed a kiss to Adalind's forehead and then released his grip on her. He called an answer to the uniform, choosing not to think too much about the disappointed sound Adalind made when she let him go and stepped back. 'I'm going to need you to give a statement.'

'You've got my number,' she told him, and he swore she added an extra sway to her hips as he walked away.

He definitely glared at Officer Haswari when he let out an appreciative whistle once the elevator doors closed behind her.


	3. Chapter 3

**a/n:** Once again I have to give a humongous thanks to everyone reading and reviewing this. You guys are awesome. Have a nee chapter!

 **Moment 3.**

Nick was fast losing any respect he had for his captain. That being said, the revelation that he was the Royal in Portland was just something else to add to the list of reasons why is day had monumentally sucked.

'Yeah, well, if anyone is going to kill him,' Adalind informed him, using her fingers to tug a corn chip free of the mountain of guacamole, sour cream and four different kinds of cheese, 'it's going to be me. He slept with my mother.'

And he kind of wanted to hit Renard now. Being reprimanded for striking his captain could only improve his day. Because, in all seriousness, nachos and beer in a booth at the back of a bar with Adalind was the easiest thing to deal with given how his day had been going.

It had started with Juliette. Juliette who had woken him at 4am with the power of her stare. There was something horribly uncomfortable about waking up to the feeling that someone was watching you and when he'd opened his eyes to find Juliette staring down at him with a fierce (if not angry) expression he didn't think anyone would blame him for the way he leapt away from her, almost falling out of bed.

'I did warn you it could happen,' Adalind pointed out.

And she had warned him. When she'd used some of her mother's blood and hair to create an antidote to the spell Catherine had put on Juliette, Adalind had warned him that counteracting the spell in such a way would undo everything Catherine had intended. She'd been very specific about how the memory loss that was part of the original spell wouldn't hold.

That had seemed like good news at the time, and the fact that Juliette had woken from her coma and recognised him seemed to support Adalind's theory, but he'd been perfectly willing to hope the memory loss surrounding the hours before she'd been hospitalised would hold.

The staring unblinkingly at him at 4am was a very clear message that all of that had come roaring back while Juliette had been sleeping.

'I did offer to make sure it stuck.' The smirk Adalind gave him over the top of her beer said she knew exactly how much he was regretting not listening to her two weeks ago.

But he hadn't wanted her involvement known, it was bad enough that his mother was aware Adalind existed, he really didn't need Monroe or Rosalee knowing that Nick and gone to Adalind for the antidote and that Juliette hadn't just woken as Hank did when Catherine lost her powers.

Which was why, when Adalind had called him and ordered him to meet her, he hadn't put up much of a fight.

Nachos and beer with a hexenbiest? Way better than having the same argument with Juliette for the fifth time about wesen and what it meant to be a grimm and why he had been lying to her for months.

Or having the same damn conversation with Hank. Because one of the people in his life learning about wesen wasn't enough, two of them had to hit him with it in the span of two days and Nick wasn't the only one tired of the questions and scrutiny. It was why he hadn't gone and hidden out at Monroe's; his best friend had earned a nice quiet date night with Rosalee.

As if sensing his thoughts, his phone rang. He declined the call, sending Juliette straight to voicemail. He didn't even care that she would know he'd done it, he wasn't in the mood to listen to her blaming him for things that were out of his control. He'd been honest with her as soon as he'd known she was in immediate danger, that had to count for something. She hadn't exactly taken the revelation about wesen and his being a grimm well when he'd first told her, panicked as he was by her cat scratch and the possibilities surrounding Catherine's revenge, he'd been a little frantic and probably hadn't been making much sense.

Mind you, having the conversation at 4am, making a trip out to the trailer and then a terribly early call on Monroe and Rosalee hadn't exactly been a walk in the park.

And yet, his morning had still been better than Adalind's.

'Manhandled into the back of a car!' she'd snapped at him when she'd called and demanded he take her out for a drink. 'I was basically kidnapped!'

There'd been a wholly unfunded moment of fear until he'd realised that he had no reason to be afraid because it was Adalind (who he didn't particularly care about) and who was a pretty powerful hexenbiest (had she become more powerful since regaining her power?) so her getting shoved into the back of a car wasn't really his problem.

He'd mostly believed that, and it hadn't really taken more than a heartbeat (or five) for the fear to be replaced by annoyance because she'd called him and didn't she have any friends?

'Oh, and I didn't even tell you the best part,' she said, bringing his mind sharply back to the bar and the surprisingly delicious nachos. 'I got fired.'

'What?' Nick frowned at her. 'What did you do?'

She looked momentarily offended that he'd assumed she'd done something wrong, but he just raised an eyebrow at her, waiting for an explanation.

'Someone from the firm saw me getting shoved into the car and recognised one of Viktor's men.'

'So?' Nick didn't understand how that could result in her getting fired instead of the police being called.

'Well apparently none of the partners want to be associated with someone who pissed off the royal family.'

That sounded like bullshit to Nick, like they'd been looking for any excuse to get rid of her, although he had no idea why they'd have been looking for an excuse. As far as he could tell, Adalind was good at her job, loved her job even.

'Can't you fight it?'

'Oh, I did,' she informed him ruefully. 'They agreed not to fire me if I resigned.' She raised her glass in a sarcastic gesture. 'Looks better on my resume.'

That hardly seemed like a win to Nick.

'Well, now I'm unemployed, I've pissed off all of the royals for refusing to work for them and the only person I can stand to be around is you.'

Nick grimaced. 'At least you could refuse,' he pointed out. 'I actually do work for one.'

'Sucks to be you.'

Nick rolled his eyes. 'What are you going to do?'

'I am going to get very drunk. Nick,' she looked at him and the only thing he could see in her expression then was a fierce determination to ruin everyone and everything that had tried to bring her down. 'get me drunk.'

In response, all Nick did was flag down the waitress for more beer.


	4. Chapter 4

**a/n:** Again, I can't thank you enough for the wonderful reviews!

 **Moment 4**

 _If I die in this storage unit I expect you to say nice things at my funeral._

Nick snorted as he read the text message, shooting off a quick reply of, _Not likely,_ before he pocketed his phone. Adalind, and he was unsurprised to learn this, did not handle unemployment well. It wasn't that she hated not having a job (although she did) it was that she didn't know what to do with the vast amounts of free time she now had on her hands and as most of the friends she had were lawyers and most of them also worked for her old firm, about the only person in her life she could (and he was beginning to suspect) wanted, to annoy was him.

Hence, the million and one text messages now clogging up his phone.

And taking up a large portion of his day, which Hank felt the need to point out as they approached the crime scene with a teasing, 'Man, who turned you into a teenage girl? Cause no one else texts that much.'

Nick didn't have a witty response to that because he did feel like he'd become permanently attached to his phone these last few days. He knew everything Adalind had been doing and, through no fault of his own, she seemed to know everything he was doing too. Which was why, today, he wasn't actually going to apologise for the incessant texting because Adalind was on a mission to deal with her mother's estate and while putting her mother's house on the market (and her own because apparently it held some truly horrible memories of her mother and Renard that Nick didn't want to think about and made him honestly wonder why she hadn't just set the whole thing on fire and claimed the insurance – he'd have let her) had been easy, dealing with the storage unit full of dark and twisted objects that had been used for her spells and made Rosalee's shop look like a pleasant flower boutique, wasn't exactly a walk through the park.

There was every chance Adalind would come across something spelled or cursed and drop dead to become a dried-out husk only found when the payments on the unit stopped coming in.

Which, Nick would admit, was starting to sound like a bad thing. But only starting. He still wasn't sold on the whole idea of liking Adalind and frankly if she got herself killed poking around in her mother's possessions then it was one less thing he had to worry about.

What he could tell Hank was, 'A friend of mine isn't handling unemployment well. Obsessive texting seems to be a side effect.'

'That sucks,' Hank nodded his understanding and Nick marvelled at the fact he hadn't had to lie (mostly – the friend thing was a bit of a stretch). He just didn't think explaining to Hank that he was texting, not only another woman – one he'd had some truly amazing sex with while Juliette had been lying in a spell-induced coma – but the woman who had left Hank for dead, was an option at this point.

Of course, then his phone went off again in his pocket. He'd turn off the notifications if everything work related didn't come through his phone (and he wasn't just slightly concerned the next message from Adalind would be a plea for rescue).

 _I'm keeping this._

Nick had just finished reading the message when the picture came through and he let out a startled laugh. Adalind had sent him a photo of herself wearing a black hat. Long blonde hair flowing over her shoulders, she was smiling and winking at him from under the brim. And while he had no doubt that Catherine Schade only possessed that hat because it was a powerful hexenbiest relic, Nick still saved the photo and set it as Adalind's contact picture in his phone.

And, although he'd never admit it, not in a million years, he saved it because it inspired a hundred different fantasies of her that were absolutely inappropriate for a guy in a relationship with another woman.

He also knew Adalind had sent it to him knowing he'd be dreaming about her later.

Which she only proved when a moment later another message followed.

 _Now remember the navy lace._


	5. Chapter 5

**a/n:** Thank you for the wonderful reviews! i'm really enjoying hearing your thoughts on how this relationship is building.

 **Moment 5**

Books littered the floor, the lamp shade from the side table was askew and both her glass of wine and his bottle of beer had been knocked from the coffee table, soaking the rug. He and Adalind were sprawled on the floor breathing heavily. Nick was pretty sure his shirt was torn but he couldn't tell because Adalind's hair was sprawled over his chest from where she'd sunk to the floor, head resting on his stomach.

Honestly, if it weren't for the dead guy lying in the hallway and the other one slumped over her couch, leaving behind a big enough blood stain that it would be easier just to replace the couch, Nick thought it might have resembled that night he and Adalind had sex.

'You okay?' he asked, when he'd managed to get his breath back. That last guy hadn't gone down easy and Nick was pretty sure he'd bruised some ribs. Thankfully not on the side Adalind was slumped against.

'I think my arm is broken,' she panted slightly. He felt her shift against him and then she yelped. 'Yes. Broken. Ugh, okay, not moving that again.'

Nick swallowed and tasted blood, running his tongue around his mouth he discovered he'd cut the inside of his cheek on some teeth, but it didn't seem to be bad. He was hardly going to worry about that when Adalind's arm was broken.

'Can you stand?'

There was another hiss of pain as she eased herself into a sitting position using her good arm to push herself up. She turned slightly to watch as he pushed himself up into a sitting position and threw his question back at him when he let out a grunt of pain.

'Are you okay?'

'Bruised ribs,' he grunted, pushing to his feet. 'They'll heal.'

'Well we don't all have grimm healing,' she grumbled, holding out her good hand so he could tug her to her feet.

'It's a perk,' he conceded, though not without a wince. He looked around the living room at the mess and the bodies. 'I should call this in.'

'And say what?' Adalind questioned with some amusement. 'That I called you and you came to my rescue? That's not really going to work a second time.'

He looked around again and decided she was right. He'd bluffed his way out of being at the scene of her mother's murder by claiming he answered her call for help and arrived just in time to stop her mother from stabbing her. This one would be a little harder to explain. There were very clear signs that he'd been there for a while. His shoes at the door and his jacket on the hook could be taken care of easily but it would be hard not to disturb the scene clearing up the signs that they'd been sharing takeout as they went through real estate listings on her laptop and watched bad tv.

Because that sounded horribly domestic for a guy in a relationship with another woman.

He scrubbed his hands over his face and let out an annoyed breath. 'Yeah, you're right. I'll take care of it.'

It wouldn't be the first time he'd hidden a body and he didn't like how easy the choice was for him. The two men that had attacked them (well Adalind, he'd just happened to be there) clearly worked for the Royals which made this a grimm problem first and a cop problem second. If they failed to turn up, no one would question what had happened to them. The Royal who sent them would just assume Adalind beat them (and she had taken down one of the men) and either they'd try again (he hoped not) or they'd just pretend it never happened and a quiet cover story would be supplied to any family the men might have.

Nick was finding it easier and easier to walk the fine line of grey that being a grimm entailed.

It was made all that much easier by the knowledge that he would rather take Adalind to the hospital than stick around and give his statement to a bunch of fellow cops (who he knew were good at their job) who would never be able to solve this crime as they lacked the majority of the key facts.

'Come on, lets get you to the hospital.'

Just in case his thoughts on how domestic his night with Adalind would look to outsiders, he compounded the problem in his own mind when he helped her slip on her shoes and coat, pocketed her house keys and then helped her into his Land Cruiser. He held her hand while the doctor poked and prodded her arm, waited around while they x-rayed it and sat by her the entire time it was being put in plaster.

He was the one to help her undress and get in to bed. The one who gave her some pain pills and left water on her night stand. And he checked on her one last time before he left for the night, two dead bodies stuffed in the back of his car as he made his way to some where he knew they'd never be found.

He should have gone home then, when the bodies were good and buried, he should have gone home to crawl into bed with Juliette. The text she'd sent him hours ago saying she was home from the emergency callout and wondering where he was should have made him feel guilty. He'd told her the truth when he said he was helping a friend look for a new place but then he should have been back before midnight not slinking in the door just shy of 2am with bruised ribs and his mind on something else.

It was easy to turn right back around and return to Adalind's house, letting himself in with her keys because he didn't like the idea of leaving her there alone after she'd just been attacked.

And if he crawled onto the bed beside her, to stretch out on top of the covers, it was only because the blood staining the couch didn't make it an option.


	6. Chapter 6

**Moment 6**

Nick was used to weird. As a grimm (and a detective) who frequently dealt with wesen cases, he was very familiar with the kind of weirdness he could somehow cram into a day. Weird was almost his normal. Which made this day weird because it was so normal. He didn't really do normal anymore.

Before his aunt came back into his life his days had been pretty straightforward. He got up in the morning, shared breakfast with Juliette, went to work, solved crime, arrested bad guys, came home to dinner with Juliette. Went to bed. Repeat. At the time, he hadn't known any different, had liked the ordinary way his life was going. He was doing what you were supposed to do as an adult in his twenties. He was ticking off milestones like he had some sort of five-year plan.

He got a good job, he met a girl. They fell in love, they bought a house, naturally his thoughts turned to marriage. He bought a ring.

He proposed. She turned him down.

Not quite ticking off the next milestone but by that point his idea of normal was wavering and he knew that Juliette's reasons for not marrying him were valid. He was lying to her, he was keeping secrets from her, he understood that she wasn't willing to make that kind of commitment when she didn't trust that he was being honest with her.

They didn't talk about how the marriage certificate was just another bit of paper at this point. They were living together, they shared expenses, shared their lives, Nick hadn't realised there was that much of a difference.

A thought possibly reinforced by the fact that they fell back into their routine. Only Nick's definition of normal had already taken a hit. The firm foundation of their relationship was shaken.

But still, some sort of normal.

And now Juliette knew all (most) of his secrets and yes there was honesty between them, he could talk to her about his day and his wesen cases now in detail and not just with vague terms that made them sound like ordinary criminals (though in some cases they were).

And it was all falling back into exactly how it had been before his aunt drove her trailer into his life.

And he hated it.

When he woke this morning, Juliette was in the shower, so he went and made coffee, started breakfast and when she came down to join him, she dropped a playful kiss on his cheek and gratefully took the plate he handed her. He watched her doctor her coffee with milk and sugar, and he asked her about her plans for the day (it was Saturday, he had to work, she didn't) and listened with only half and ear as she told him about catching up on paperwork and coffee with a friend.

They didn't catch a case and so Nick found himself doing his own paperwork, his day interrupted by ordinary things like trips to the break room for more coffee, a walk down the street to a deli for lunch, the light mocking of other cops. He and Hank filled their time with discussing the cases they were filling the paperwork for, talked to the labs to clarify results, responded to some emails and confirmed some things for their next court appearance.

At the end of the day, with still no case, he went home. Juliette had cooked and they sat on the couch and watched a movie and talked about how her friend was having trouble with her kid at school and then they went to bed. They had sex and Juliette fell asleep with her head pillowed on his shoulder and Nick lay awake feeling like he was caught in a bad case of déjà vu.

And he thought about a different day just the week before.

He'd woken up with a face full of blonde hair. He'd exhaled with a laugh, blowing the hair off his face and gently untangling his limbs from hers. He'd still managed to wake her up with his movements and she'd looked at him through bleary eyes and mumbled something disgruntled when she realised where she was and why her arm hurt. She didn't question why he was there, just demanded he help her get dressed.

They'd made breakfast together, arguing the whole time about the best way to cook eggs and how bacon was delicious, and she was crazy for thinking otherwise. She made him do the dishes and tidy up the house and then he went to work (late) and his day was filled with a mix of paperwork and interviews with suspects in a robbery all interspersed with texts from Adalind that provided a running commentary on her day, questions about his and the (false) declaration that he owed her a couch.

He didn't go straight home (Juliette was at a birthday dinner), he spent some time with Monroe and Rosalee at the shop, grabbed some takeout and went home and passed out in an empty bed. Only to be woken two hours later by a phone call from Juliette who'd had too much to drink and needed him to pick her up. He'd been annoyed about that.

An hour after he'd gotten her into bed, his phone rang again. He'd found himself smirking at the picture of Adalind in the black hat. He hadn't found himself annoyed to learn that she was in the middle of nowhere with a body (or four) and could he please come and get her.

The next time he'd crawled into a bed it had been Adalind's and he hadn't so much crawled as faceplanted from exhaustion and not at all helpful to Adalind who was thoughtfully tugging his boots and jeans off as best she could with only one working hand.

Now a week later, he couldn't help noticing the difference, how one had felt normal, the other weird. How he'd been more annoyed by Juliette's simple drunkenness (which had taken a whole twenty minutes to deal with) versus Adalind's killing four people and forcing him to disappear four more bodies which had taken hours.

He couldn't help thinking how he'd already been planning excuses to get out of that birthday dinner with Juliette's friend even before she'd let him off the hook explaining it was girls only. How he'd preferred to spend an hour at the Spice Shop with Monroe and Rosalee and eat takeout at home alone than spend the evening with Juliette.

He couldn't help thinking about marriage and turned down proposals and whether or not it was healthy to fall back into a relationship as though nothing had changed when everything had.

But it was late and eventually Nick fell asleep and, in the morning, when Juliette stumbled sleepily into the kitchen and Nick teased her, his quiet thoughts from the night before seemed like an overreaction. Like the tired thoughts of a mind numbed by boredom and paperwork.

And they might have stayed that way, only, he was digging through a drawer looking for something and he found the ring he'd bought all those months ago and when he picked it up his first thought was more of an offhand amusement when he remembered the shy and flirty smile on Adalind's face morphing to discomfort when his being a Grimm forced out her inner hexenbiest.

The ring didn't go back in the drawer, it didn't make it to Juliette's finger either, she was still sitting on the couch enjoying her lazy Sunday.

He stopped on the way in to work and sold it.

And it felt a little like reclaiming his new normal. The one that was nothing but weird.

 **a/n:** We're getting closer! I mean, there's still a lot more moments-in-between to get through but we are getting there. Just a quick note that, unless stated otherwise, the cases that we saw in the episodes are still occurring (well, will be occurring) just with less Juliette angst. Thanks for the wonderful reviews!


	7. Chapter 7

**a/n:** For PariB in thanks for an amazingly insightful review.

 **Moment 7**

He probably should have been more suspicious of the peace. The incessant texting had stopped hours ago and for the first day in a while he didn't know where Adalind was or what she was doing.

It was disconcerting at best, certainly alarming at worst.

He'd given up on pretending he wanted her dead or, more accurately, that his life would be better off were she dead, but he figured it didn't really mater how he currently felt about her, because having an unchecked hexenbiest as powerful (and frankly as up for revenge) as Adalind on the loose was never going to be good for his peace of mind.

But he was busy with a case involving wesen going violently mad (which effected Rosalee) and he could really have used her help which did make the silence from her more alarming than disconcerting because what if she was one of the wesen effected? Even if she wasn't, with Rosalee out of commission, Adalind would have been really handy to have around trying to mix up a cure.

But she wasn't around and he didn't know where she was and by the time dinner rolled around he was starting to get worried. Which he couldn't explain to Monroe who pointedly asked him if he was okay. Twice.

Which Nick didn't think was fair to his friend who was worried about Rosalee and didn't need to be worrying that his friend was under another love (infatuation?) spell at the hands of Adalind Schade.

Which he very clearly wasn't because he hadn't been mooning after her like Hank or showing any adverse effects of a love spell in which he started eating the furniture.

And thank god for that.

Rosalee was the first to get the cure once Monroe had it all worked out but they were running low on a key ingredient. Thankfully, Monroe had picked up a thing or two from Rosalee and both recognised the funny looking weed and knew that Nick had a stash in Marie's trailer.

It was the absolute last place Nick would have thought to look for Adalind but sure enough, when he stepped inside, there she was, curled up in the chair surrounded by open books with a notepad covered in notes.

Monroe's alarmed snarl went unnoticed by Nick who snapped, 'Have you seriously been hiding out here all day? I've been calling you all afternoon.'

Startled by his words (though not really by Monroe's snarl), Adalind looked up at him and blinked. 'Nick?'

'Adalind,' he countered, voice dripping with exasperation.

'What are you doing here?'

'What am I doing here? It's my trailer! What the hell are you doing here?'

'Oh,' Adalind shrugged, 'I stole your keys the other day.'

'You stole my keys?' Nick repeated. 'Why?' He thought if he asked calmly he might be more likely to get a response.

Adalind frowned. 'You know, I don't know. I probably could have just asked you but that's not really us.'

She could have asked and he would have given her the keys to the trailer. Of course, he'd have made her promise she wasn't going to use whatever she did in there to kill or curse anyone he'd have to then deal with, but he would have given her the keys.

'Adalind,' Nick snapped again. 'Why are you here?'

Adalind didn't really do guilty, not when she didn't think she had anything to be sorry for and Nick had never come across any of those moments. But she did look sheepish on occasion and she looked it then.

She indicated two boxes behind her, 'My apartment isn't exactly safe at the moment and my mother had some really nasty things in her storage shed.'

'Okay…' this sounded particularly dubious to Nick.

'Well I didn't think you'd mind if I stored the worst stuff here. Just, um, don't touch the box on the bottom without gloves. I think it's leaking malice.'

'It's what?' Nick asked.

'Leaking malice,' Adalind repeated because repeating it made it that much more sensible. 'I actually think Rosalee could help me with that,' she added, looking over Nick's shoulder at Monroe.

Nick had honestly forgotten his friend was there and he turned around to make an excuse but stopped short at the look on Monroe's face. 'What?'

'Dude!' Monroe exclaimed but he didn't seem to have anything else to add to that. Obviously he'd decided that if Nick wasn't attacking Adalind, was talking to her quite reasonably even, then he didn't need to be concerned. It probably helped that as far as Monroe was concerned Adalind wasn't a hexenbiest anymore.

'What are you doing here, anyway?'

All Nick could do was roll his eyes. 'Have you been here all day?'

'No, not all day.' Adalind tilted her head at him. 'Um, what time is it?'

'Its almost eight,' he informed her. 'I've tried to call you seven times today.'

'No you haven't.'

Nick rolled his eyes, pulled out his phone and rang her cell again. He followed the sound to where she'd tossed her jacket onto a stack of books and fished her phone out of the pocket. He took a moment to be indignant about the photo she'd set as his contact (although he could appreciate that anyone casually looking through her phone might assume it was a picture of his murdered corpse) before he ended the call on his end and handed her her phone.

'Eight missed calls and five unanswered texts,' he helpfully pointed out. 'We really could have used your help today.'

Adalind winced. 'Sorry. I got to reading this account of a grimm and a zauberbiest and then I got sucked in following a path and…' she trailed off looking sheepish again.

He huffed out a breath that bordered on fond rather than annoyed. Sometimes it was easy to forget how much of a nerd Adalind was. He moved toward her and tugged on her arm. 'You need to go home.'

'Oh but I - ' she protested, resisting his pull.

'Have you even eaten today?'

'Maybe.' Which told him she hadn't. 'But I just need to finish this one book and then I'm done.'

Nick rolled his eyes. Rather than leave her in the trailer to get sucked back into her research and have to come back to check on her and feed her in the morning, Nick cut to the chase and just lifted her bodily out of the chair and carried her out of the trailer. Calling a request back over his shoulder for Monroe to grab what they'd originally come for.

'And grab her jacket,' he added.

Outside the trailer he dropped her back on her feet and turned her to face the direction he figured her car was in. Monroe, still with the strange look on his face, handed Nick her jacket which he helped her into. She protested the whole time that she was an adult perfectly capable of looking after herself but he ignored her. Once she was in the jacket he tugged the keys from her pocket to place in her hand, replaced her phone in the other pocket and shoved her gently in the back.

'Go.'

'But - '

'Adalind, go home.'

'Fine.'

Nick watched her go and then turned to Monroe only to find his friend staring at him with an understanding expression that unsettled Nick. 'What?'

'Dude,' Monroe exhaled the word with all the feeling he could manage behind it. 'You like her.'

Nick groaned. 'Ugh, I know. She grows on you like a fungus and then suddenly instead of chopping her head off with a rusty axe I'm taking her to the god damn hospital to get a cast for her broken arm.'

'No,' Monroe shook his head. 'Nick, you _like_ her.'

'I really don't.'

Monroe didn't look like he believed him. Nick wasn't so sure he believed himself.


	8. Chapter 8

**a/n:** My longest chapter yet (for obvious reasons) and one that really gets the ball rolling. Thanks for the wonderful reviews!

 **Moment 8**

Nick thought he'd done a pretty good job setting Monroe straight on his opinion regarding the feelings he didn't have for Adalind. (He hadn't.) But even if he had, there just wasn't an easy way to talk his way around this one.

He and Adalind were, well, they were Nick and Adalind, which meant they'd walked through the door of the restaurant bickering about how she'd sold her mother's house and her own in what was possibly record time but still didn't have a new place to live. Adalind was pointing out she'd found plenty of new apartments and Nick was arguing he'd shot them all down for very valid reasons.

And he had. Mostly. Even he would admit that third one had mostly been because the guy living in the apartment next door had spent a good ten minutes flirting with Adalind. Which would have been fine. Really. If not for the fact that Nick had once arrested him. And okay, sure, it was a minor charge (public intoxication during a bachelor party pub crawl) but still not someone Nick thought Adalind should be hanging around.

Someone with a bit more objectivity might have pointed out that Nick had once committed murder to save Adalind and that was a lot worse than public intoxication but there were extenuating circumstances. And it wasn't murder. It was a perfectly justified use of excessive force. How was he supposed to know there was a window there?

And okay, not the point. The point was he and Adalind were taking a break from boxing up her stuff to get some food and, because Portland could be the smallest of small towns when the universe was out to make your life more complicated than it had to be, they chose the same restaurant Monroe and Rosalee had decided on.

Hence the awkward moment when Rosalee, glancing back when the door opened, spotted him as he held the door open for Adalind. He'd like to think the fact he was mid-eye roll and Adalind was shooting him an annoyed look that suggested there was more pain in his future than friendly conversation went a long way to proving he was right and Monroe was wrong regarding that whole feelings thing but judging by the open mouthed look of surprise on Rosalee's face and the way she elbowed Monroe in the gut he was out of luck.

Also, there was the whole factor that he was too wrapped up in his argument with Adalind and he didn't notice Monroe and Rosalee were staring at them until he literally walked right into Adalind who had frozen in surprise.

'Oh, hey,' he greeted. And he did not shift awkwardly like he'd been caught out. Because he hadn't, Juliette even knew where he was. Sort of. He had told her he was helping a friend move and that they might grab some dinner. She'd had a long week and had been more than happy to lounge on the couch and catch up on some of the tv shows she'd been neglecting. He just hadn't told her that friend was Adalind because that just opened a whole can of worms he wasn't in the mood to talk about.

'Hi,' Rosalee greeted after a beat that was definitely more awkward than not.

'Nick,' Monroe nodded his head. 'Adalind.' Monroe seemed more amused than anything when he met Nick's gaze and Nick rolled his eyes.

'Table for four?'

'Yes,' Rosalee leapt to answer the waitress' question before anyone else could.

The last time Nick had been on a double date (not that this was in any way a double date) with Adalind, he'd spent most of the conversation trying to trip her up in her lies and she'd spent most of it baiting him while Hank and Juliette carried on like nothing was wrong.

And later Nick would have to wonder how his partner (a trained detective) hadn't noticed what was really going on or Juliette who was supposed to know Nick better than anyone. Also, there might have been a fleeting moment where he considered how exactly they'd managed not to have sex against that wall outside the bathrooms when he confronted her. But that was in his half-asleep state and he didn't pay much attention to that side of his brain anymore because it liked to replay naked Adalind a lot and he didn't have time to deal with the implications of _that_.

This (not a) double date was totally different. Oh, he and Adalind still spent most of the meal snarking at each other over all sorts of things but it wasn't covering an undercurrent of murderous intent (well, not all of it anyway – they were still Nick and Adalind and if he didn't imagine killing her at least once in a conversation then the world might very well be ending). Adalind, being that she was Adalind, managed to charm Rosalee within the first five minutes by bringing up the box she'd taken from her mother's storage locker – the one that was still leaking malice all over his trailer stinking the place up with a general air of wanting to cause harm to people who he would otherwise just have offered an annoyed grunt.

And this might have had something to do with the guy and the window.

But then Adalind excused herself to the bathroom and despite his hand on her thigh very sharply informing her she was not allowed to leave him alone with his friends, she did just that.

Of course, as if sensing his discomfort Rosalee led the interrogation with, 'Oh my god, Nick, you _like_ her.'

'Why does everyone keep saying that?'

Rosalee ignored him, the waitress who stopped at just that moment to top off their water however felt it was perfectly acceptable to tell him, 'It's the touching. The witty banter. The fact that I'm going to need a cold shower just watching you two talk,' before she wandered away again with a wink and a snap of her gum.

There was dead silence in her wake broken when Monroe couldn't hold in his feelings anymore and snorted a laugh. Rosalee's mouth started to twitch but she kept control of it because she thought (rightfully) they needed to have a serious discussion about this.

Nick assumed (also rightfully) Monroe had told her everything he'd learned after the incident at the trailer. He'd had been honest about how much time he'd been spending with Adalind and how he'd ended up helping her out with the Royals and the Verat. He'd left out a few key details but they weren't things Monroe really needed to know as they weren't particularly relevant to the bizarre friendship he'd struck up with the blonde.

All these things, all the time he'd been spending with Adalind, did however have Rosalee concerned by his behaviour. 'What about Juliette?' she asked. She didn't give him a chance to respond before she went on to say, 'You might not be sleeping with Adalind, Nick, but what you're doing still looks like cheating.'

It was the barest twitch of his eye but Monroe caught it. 'Dude!'

'Nick!' Rosalee scolded sharply, betrayal on Juliette's behalf flashing in her eyes. 'What did you do?'

And Nick didn't exactly have a defence. Because it had never been his intention but he had betrayed Juliette when he slept with Adalind. It didn't matter the extenuating circumstances. It didn't matter that the sex was more about getting back the powers he stole from her. It had still been sex.

Sex with another woman while his girlfriend was lying in a spell induced coma in the hospital.

Explaining that to Juliette wouldn't excuse his behaviour. It couldn't. He had done the wrong thing in not just shutting the door in Adalind's face or shooting her when he had the chance. And he'd only made the whole situation worse by continuing to hang out with Adalind. Even if they'd done nothing sexual since, Rosalee was right, what he was doing with Adalind was wrong. He was betraying everything he and Juliette had built, he was lying to her.

For a moment all he could do was drown in the guilt. Knowing if Juliette ever found out she'd be so hurt.

But it was Adalind.

Adalind who had tried to kill his aunt and his partner and had almost killed Wu. It was Adalind who had broken her arm fighting to save her own life. Adalind who had even with that broken arm, managed to kill the four men who tried again the next night. Adalind who had been more annoyed by the whole thing than scared. Adalind who stole his keys and made him breakfast (but forced him to do the dishes), who sent him stupid text messages when she was bored.

Adalind who could look at a weird old German word in a book and point him in the right direction to solve a wesen crime that was stumping even Rosalee and then turn right around and tell him she hated the commercial that was playing in the background while he explained his case but that it did remind her, could he bring milk with him when he came over?

It was Adalind.

And so he said, 'I should break up with Juliette.'

Which wasn't at all what Rosalee or Monroe was expecting him to say because it was Adalind and to them she was just the woman who tried to kill his aunt and his partner. The one he'd stripped of her powers in a knock down drag out fight.

But to Nick, it was occurring to him that in the last two months all the things he'd once have done with Juliette and a load of other things he would never be able to do with Juliette, he'd wanted to do them with Adalind first. She was the one he called when he wanted to tell someone about his day. Adalind was the one he went to when he needed a chance to just be himself. Even if that version of himself was the grimm he was becoming and had only stopped at her place because he didn't think he should go home covered in blood and venom.

The point was he could go straight to Adalind covered in blood and venom and all she'd done was hand him a bottle of hospital grade disinfectant and told him to clean out the shower when he was done. And then burned all his clothes in the backyard.

'You're serious,' Monroe said, taken aback.

'That's not exactly what I was saying,' Rosalee added. 'I just thought you should consider what you're doing to Juliette being _friends_ with Adalind.'

But Nick was beginning to realise all those little things that had been nagging at him for the last few weeks, since he'd sold the ring, maybe even before that, had been leading up to this point.

Because, damnit, Monroe and Rosalee were right, he liked Adalind. A lot more than he should and it wasn't fair to Juliette. It wasn't fair to Adalind. Because it didn't matter how she felt about him, whether she even liked him or not, she didn't deserve to be the other woman any more than Juliette deserved his unfaithfulness.

Because he was being unfaithful to Juliette. Even if sometimes he felt like he was betraying Adalind by spending time with Juliette.

And that was a lot of things to learn (and realise) in such a short amount of time in a very public place and Nick had to wonder at the expression on his face when Adalind sat back down beside him because she frowned at him, placing her hand on his leg under the table.

'Yikes, what did I miss?'

'I'm going to break up with Juliette.'

'She found out you sold the ring?' Adalind guessed.

'What? No,' he replied even as Monroe and Rosalee were both offering their own surprised reactions to the news he'd sold the engagement ring. And that Adalind even knew about it.

The ring he'd bought the day he met Adalind. Or well, had seen her for the first time.

Really, he probably should have seen it sooner.

'Well I'd offer you my couch but I still haven't replaced the last one we destroyed. Also, I don't currently have a house.'

He might have just realised he liked her ( _like_ liked her – because that didn't sound juvenile at all) but right in that moment he knew why and he couldn't help but laugh because those were just very Adalind responses to the news he was planning on breaking up with his girlfriend of _years_ on an apparent whim over dinner with friends.

And they were back to bickering about her housing situation as though dinner hadn't just taken a turn toward life changing decisions.

(Of course, just because he'd said he needed to break up with Juliette didn't mean he'd follow it through.)

Because she was still Adalind and he was still Nick.


	9. Chapter 9

**a/n:** Well, here we go, the chapter you've been waiting for (well, one of them). Thanks again for all the wonderful reviews! And an apology in advance if I disappear off the face of the earth, my tablet is on its last legs but after three years of near constant use I can't say I blame it.

 **Moment 9**

 **(the break up)**

In the end, it took him two long weeks to break up with Juliette. Not for lack of trying but simply through a series of unfortunate events and some blatant ignorance on her part.

The first time was the morning after the awkward (not a) double date. He sat her down and uttered those dreaded words, 'We need to talk,' and he'd expected it to be hard and for her to be surprised but he hadn't expected her to flip it around on him and run the conversation in a completely different direction.

Because instead of an expression of dread, she looked up at him and said, 'I know,' and followed it up with, 'I want to be more involved in your wesen cases.'

And then she'd been off and running with a list of reasons why she needed to be more involved and how she wanted to understand better what he did and he felt so guilty that breaking up with her didn't happen.

The second time he tried to break up with her, they were in the car and they'd just had an argument over something one of her friends had said over dinner (she was getting married and wanted to know when Nick and Juliette were planning to tie the knot). The idea of marrying Juliette had Nick breaking out in a cold sweat and if that wasn't proof they should no longer be in a relationship he didn't know what was but Juliette had breezed through the conversation with a startled laugh, telling all about Nick's failed proposal and how the next time he got around to asking she'd have a whole different response.

He'd been mad at her for sharing the story and painting him as the bad guy in that proposal story and she'd thought the whole thing was a bit of a joke so he snapped, 'I sold the ring. I'm not going to ask.'

And then a five-year-old girl wearing pyjamas and no shoes had run out in front of his car and he'd ended up involved in a kidnapping case and the fight with Juliette got pushed aside to deal with that.

And then Rosalee had to go out of town and Angelina was back and there was just never a good time so he started the motions of packing up some of his belongings as a not so subtle hint. Only she seemed to think he was going through a bout of spring cleaning and told him it was good he was getting rid of some of the crap he'd accumulated over the years.

At the time, he had been filling a box with stuff he intended to throw out because that wasn't his life anymore and so he'd been offended but couldn't quite figure out how to tell her so.

He'd taken refuge at Monroe's who was moping a little (Rosalee was still away and he'd just watched his ex-girlfriend die so Nick was cutting him some slack) and Adalind had come over with a bottle of wine and her laptop and the three of them had gone about looking for an apartment for Adalind and somewhere Nick could move his trailer to because the storage yard wasn't exactly secure.

Monroe still didn't know Adalind had her powers back and Nick figured that would probably be something that would alter Monroe's perception of the blonde but Nick also knew that Adalind was all kinds of amazing and Monroe genuinely liked her. And as a blutbad who'd become a vegetarian after a rather wild and merciless upbringing he couldn't exactly hold her past against her.

And he'd gone home and tried to break up with Juliette again only she'd gotten called out in the middle of his opening sentence to a vet emergency and he'd just gone to bed instead.

The next time he tried, he took her by the arms, moved her to the couch, sat her down and said, 'This isn't working.'

At which point a giant rock was thrown through their front window and it turned out one of the first offenders he ever put away was out on parole and looking for some revenge. Which took up another couple of days in which Juliette stayed with a friend and Nick worked round the clock trying to get the proof needed to put him away again.

Then he lied to Juliette about when the whole thing was over, took an extra night of her not being in the house to pack up even more of his belongings (which he stashed in Monroe's attic) and then spent the night doing some things that weren't entirely illegal with Adalind that left his aunts trailer in a nice out of the way location on a block of land in the middle of the forest that he purchased using cash under an identity Adalind had for emergencies.

He hadn't asked. She hadn't offered an explanation and they'd both gone back to her place where he found a loft she refused to move into but he decided to buy anyway because he did want to break up with Juliette and he didn't want to stay in a house with so many memories. Adalind thought he was being paranoid.

He wasn't.

When he finally managed to break up with Juliette it was more painful than it had to be simply because he'd reached the point where he just wanted it over.

She'd been more involved in his wesen cases, he'd been more open with her about what he did on his cases and yet being around her just felt so…off. It wasn't comfortable anymore, too much history between them. And honestly he didn't like the thing their relationship had become, he didn't like that after his failed marriage proposal they'd fallen back into old habits because it was easier than facing the truth.

Juliette hadn't trusted Nick enough to marry him then and Nick didn't trust Juliette enough now to be himself with her.

And that was the crux of it. As much as Juliette was willing to be a part of his wesen life, as much as she was embracing his grimm nature, Nick didn't want to go to her with those things. She wasn't someone he could go to for help, she wasn't someone he trusted to have his back in a fight.

She wasn't someone he trusted enough to bury a body and not ask questions.

He and Monroe had already passed that milestone of their friendship, Rosalee too when she helped with his cases. He trusted Adalind to help him bury a body – hell he trusted Adalind to stand beside him as the cause of all those bodies as he did with Monroe.

But he didn't trust Juliette with those things, much like he would never ask Hank to cross that line. He would never ask Juliette to help him cover up a murder.

He'd commit one for Adalind.

And so he used a day Juliette was at work that he had off and he packed up the last of his things and when Juliette came home he was waiting for her, duffel bag by his feet. When she came through the door she smiled at him and made to greet him with a kiss but he turned his head away so she got his cheek instead.

'What's going on?' she asked, glancing down at the duffel bag he'd stuffed the last of his clothes in. 'Are you going somewhere?'

'I'm going to go stay with Monroe for a couple of days,' he told her.

Juliette frowned. 'Why?'

Nick placed his keys on the table beside him. 'This isn't working anymore. Us,' he clarified when she looked at him blankly. 'I can't do this anymore.'

'What?'

'I'm not the same man you met, I'm not even the same man who asked you to marry him,' Nick told her honestly. 'I'm keeping things from you, hiding parts of my life from you and I know you're trying to understand my life. I know you want to be part of it but I don't want that. I don't want you knowing that side of my life.'

'No,' Juliette shook her head, hands clenching into fists. 'You don't just get to make that decision. We need to talk about this.'

'I've been talking about this,' Nick insisted. 'For weeks now! But you just kept changing the subject or something came up and I'm tired of tiptoeing around this. This isn't what I want anymore, Juliette.'

He didn't say he was sorry, didn't say anything more. He picked up his duffel bag and he left.

Of course, it wasn't that easy. You don't break off a relationship that spanned years easily. It might have been better if it had ended there. For Juliette at least. Nick didn't have any regrets about what happened next.

She called him a lot over the next few days, visited Monroe in the hopes of catching him and even stopped by the station to talk to him but he managed to avoid her. Until he didn't.

A couple of reapers came looking for him and he managed to lure them out of the public eye into a dark corner of the supermarket parking lot. He didn't know it at the time but Juliette saw his car, pulled in to try and talk to him and then followed quietly after him as he lured his attackers away.

The fight was rough, brutal even and he was taken by surprise part way through when a couple members of the verat joined the party which he didn't think was at all fair. He killed the reapers with their own blades and knocked the two verat down, intending to tie them up and interrogate them – probably in the basement of the Spice Shop.

But then one of them was spewing bravado and made a mistake.

'You're going to die, grimm, and then we'll come for your blonde whore.'

They were tied up and kneeling but the threat to Adalind changed his plans. 'You could have lived,' he told the one who'd made the threat, before he slammed the point of a reaper blade into his throat and yanked it out again, spraying blood as he tore through the artery. He did the same to the other before he calmly wiped his prints from the handle of the scythe and dropped it onto the asphalt.

He would leave this mess as another warning for the royals.

And then he looked up and found Juliette staring at him in horror. 'What are you doing here?'

Juliette whimpered and then she turned and ran. Nick thought about going after her but he didn't know what good that would do. She'd just witnessed the darkness he'd never wanted her to see. He didn't think anything else needed saying.

Watching him rip the throats out of two men he already had bound finally seemed to hammer his point home. He wasn't the same man she'd fallen in love with and she wasn't someone this new Nick wanted to love anymore.

When he arrived back at Monroe's, his friend sniffed the air, looked at all the blood and simply offered him a beer.

And Nick smiled.


	10. Chapter 10

**a/n:** This chapter is pure domestic fluff. I wanted to write something that would show Nick and Adalind doing something completely ordinary just to show that for him it was all about Adalind and not the excitement of her being wesen and involved in his life. Thanks again for the many wonderful reviews, follows and favourites!

 **Moment 9**

With a grin, Adalind tumbled backward onto the mattress. The tight grip she had on the front of his jacket pulled him down with her and he let out a soft grunt as he lost his fight with gravity and his weight settled over her. She wriggled a little and smiled.

'I like it.'

He rolled off her, flopping onto the bed beside her and moved around to get comfortable. 'I like the last one better,' he decided.

Adalind rolled her eyes, propped herself up on her elbows and glanced over at him. 'You haven't liked a single mattress we've tried.'

Nick looked up and over at her. 'Hey, I come home with a lot of aches and pains,' he defended. 'I want the perfect mattress.'

'Did you have this much trouble choosing one with Juliette?' Adalind wondered.

Nick shook his head. 'The bed and mattress came with Juliette.'

Adalind considered that. 'You like my mattress,' she pointed out. 'I think the third one we tried was like mine.'

Nick shook his head. 'I hate your mattress.'

Adalind scoffed. 'You slept fine in my bed.'

'That wasn't the mattress,' Nick told her, 'that was you.'

'Flatterer.' She smiled which turned into a frown as she slid off the mattress. 'Next one then?'

It took another six mattresses before Nick was happy. It would have been four but the first one he liked Adalind had hated.

'This is what you think is comfortable?' she huffed, shuffling around.

Nick hummed in confirmation. 'You don't like it?'

'Too hard.'

'Next one, then,' he said sitting up. He probably should have been annoyed it was taking so long to find a mattress but without Juliette he was finding there were a lot of things he could take his time over.

Besides, he didn't mind spending the day with Adalind even if it was just shopping for a mattress for the loft he'd purchased.

'What?' Adalind said, following him. She was starting to sound a little impatient with him but she always sounded a little impatient with him when she thought he was being stupid. He kind of liked it. 'Nick, if you like this one, get this one. What does it matter if I like it?'

Nick looked at her, really looked at her. When she glanced up at him and their eyes locked he said, 'It matters.'

She flushed a little. Soft pink suffusing creamy cheeks and he suddenly wished they weren't in the middle of a store. 'Oh,' she whispered. 'Really?' she drawled the word with something that could have been a smirk.

Nick stepped closer until he was almost flush against her, one hand going to her hip, tugging her that last little bit closer. His other hand landed on the small of her back and her own came to rest on his chest between them. She looked up at him and he smiled. 'Really.'

'Not this one then,' she agreed.

'No,' Nick agreed. 'Not this one.'

'Do you guys need help? Or is this one of those times I'm going to need to call the cops?' the voice interrupting their moment sounded annoyed and given that Nick could imagine what had prompted those calls to the cops he couldn't say he blamed the guy.

Nick stepped away from Adalind and turned to face the employee who had wandered over to them with an expression that suggested he knew where the fire hose was and wasn't afraid to use it on them – stock be damned. Adalind's soft laugh suggested she'd interpreted the look the same way.

'We're good,' he told the guy. 'No cops needed.'

'We could use your help though,' Adalind butted in before Nick could dismiss him. Nick took that to mean she was genuinely sick of mattress shopping because by the time she'd outlined what Nick was looking for, the guy had narrowed it down to two. They both hated the first one but the second elicited a delicious moan from Adalind that prompted the employee to wince.

'This one,' Nick agreed.

The employee stalked off to get the appropriate paperwork, muttering under his breath about horny couples and how he really hated retail. A sentiment he repeated when Nick had to be difficult and organise to pick up the mattress instead of taking the store up on their complimentary delivery.

'Your paranoia is showing again,' Adalind informed him once they were back in his car.

'There is nothing wrong with not wanting anyone to know where I live,' Nick defended. 'And it's not like you can talk. You've been hotel hopping for the last two weeks.'

'That's not paranoia,' Adalind scoffed. 'There are people out to get me.'

Nick couldn't argue with that; the royals were still showing an interest in her although neither of them were entirely sure why. Their initial interest he could understand but now it felt like they were targeting her out of revenge for the men she (and Nick) had killed. Which only seemed to be getting more of them killed. It seemed like a lot of effort when they could just leave her be and keep their men alive.

Still, he'd have preferred her not living out of a suitcase and changing hotels everything two or three days. What kind of life was that?

An hour later they were standing in an aisle filling a basket with cleaning products. 'This was always my least favourite thing about moving,' Nick observed.

Adalind shrugged. 'I liked knowing that I was the one to make sure the whole place was clean before I started moving in my things.' She caught sight of the hopeful look on his face and added, with a roll of her eyes, 'Yes, I'm going to help you clean. If you ever expect me to spend time in your fortress of paranoia I'm going to be helping you clean it.'

'Fortress of paranoia?' he repeated with a laugh.

'Your grimm is showing,' she informed him sincerely.

'You haven't even been there yet,' he pointed out.

'I saw the photos on your phone,' she reminded him. 'It's not a house Nick and calling it a loft is a little optimistic.'

Nick shrugged. The moment he'd seen it, he'd known he'd wanted to buy the old paint factory. Maybe he was being paranoid, maybe his grimm was showing. Or maybe he'd just been watching a lot of home renovation programmes with Adalind. Honestly, it was probably a combination of all three, but when he'd seen the ad for the living space above the old factory, noted the address and how far it was from prying eyes, he'd known he had to buy it when Adalind wouldn't.

The dubious look on Adalind's face when they pulled up outside the building had him smiling. She looked wholly unimpressed by the garage space and when they got into the elevator and she saw the old-style grate he had to lower before it would engage, she frowned. She did let out a sigh of relief when she actually stepped out of the elevator and saw the loft itself.

'Alright,' she admitted, 'it has potential.'

Amused, he watched her inspect every inch of the loft, calling out comments as she went. She liked the kitchen although she said it needed a few appliances updated (he'd already known that), she took one look at the bathroom and declared that was the first thing they were renovating. She liked the open master bedroom but said he needed to find some way to create another space. She had ideas about how to use every bit of the loft and when she headed up the stairs to the roof he knew it had won her over.

She'd been right there beside him while he watched those home reno shows after all.

And he kind of like watching her make plans for his loft like maybe it was theirs.


	11. Chapter 11

**a/n:** Guys, I had the most amazing weekend. Took a camping trip with some friends, climbed a mountain (I can still feel parts of my body I never wanted to know could hurt) and slept (kind of) in a tent in the middle of some truly epic gale force winds. I'm totally exhausted. And I was mostly social media free. I did answer some PMs and a review or two because you get surprisingly speedy internet on the top of a mountain. Anyway, I sat here staring at this chapter trying to make it longer and you know what? It doesn't need to be because this is exactly the moment I wanted to show. Thanks for the wonderful encouragement in the form of reviews, favourites and followers!

 **Moment 11**

He knew for a fact he'd gone to bed alone. It made the fact that he woke up under a layer of magazines and paperwork to the smell of coffee a little confusing. Still, there was only one other person who currently knew the location of his home and would also be perfectly willing to climb into bed beside him and use his sleeping form as a table so it wasn't a shock to turn his head to find Adalind propped up against the headboard, legs crossed as she flicked through pages on his iPad and checked the paperwork scattered across the bed (and him) while she sipped on coffee.

'Hey,' he greeted sleepily. 'How long have you been here?' He thought that was the safer question to ask because it was far too early to ask just what she thought she was doing.

'A couple of hours,' she replied without looking at him.

'A couple of…' Nick squinted through bleary eyes at the watch on her freshly cast free wrist. 'Adalind, it's not even eight.'

She waved that off like it was nothing, which didn't surprise him. 'I've got a lot to do today.'

He hesitated, glancing down at the papers and glossy magazines spread across the bed, before reluctantly he asked, 'What are you doing?'

'I'm trying to decide on a new tile for the bathroom,' she told him. 'And then I've got to meet with a hexenbiest I know about making this place impossible to find, I've got an appointment scheduled with a plumber to move one of the pipes in the bathroom and the new tub should be coming with him. Also, I think we should explore the rest of the factory, see what else we can do with it because I think…'

She kept talking but Nick wasn't really listening anymore. He'd had about three hours of sleep, he was due back at work in two hours and he was just too tired to keep up with her excited plans for his home. He dropped his head back onto his pillow, rolled until he had his face buried against her knee, snaked a hand around her ankle and was out before she noticed he'd stopped listening.

He trusted her to know what he liked and to at least meet him in the middle on some things. He'd rather get the extra sleep.

When he woke the second time, this time to his alarm, he could still smell coffee but he could also hear the soft murmur of voices. When he stumbled out of the bedroom he found Adalind talking to a dark-haired woman he didn't know. The two were seated on the couch, curled up at either end so they could face each other, nursing mugs of still steaming coffee. They both looked over the back of the couch at him when he stumbled down the last step.

Nick managed to grunt a greeting before he wandered into the kitchen in search of his own coffee. There was a mug waiting for him beside the pot and after he'd taken a swallow (or three) he felt awake enough to deal with the stranger Adalind had bought into his home. If he didn't know she'd never betray his trust he might have been concerned, as it was he had a vague feeling he should know who this woman was.

Both women regarded him with smiles. Adalind's was that fond one she got sometimes when he did something sweet. Or stupid. He should probably be concerned the look was the same. The stranger had a wide smile like she'd just seen something that answered a great deal of her questions.

'You must be Nick,' she offered. 'Adalind's just been telling me all about you.'

'Henrietta is the hexenbiest I told you about this morning,' Adalind explained. 'She's going to help me put protections around the factory so no one can just stumble here or follow you home.'

Nick only had a vague sense of their conversation from before but he was intrigued by what she was saying. 'You can do that?'

'I can.'

'Good.' Nick looked to Adalind, 'You said something about a plumber too, right?'

She nodded. 'He's not here yet, you can still use the water.'

He nodded, took his coffee and got ready for work. When he emerged from the bedroom dressed and ready to go, Adalind and her friend were nowhere to be seen. When he called her name, he learned they were up on the roof. He didn't bother traipsing up there to find out what the pair were up to, he was already running late to work. He just hoped when he finished for the day, he'd be able to find his own home and didn't have to call her to get around whatever protections she'd put in place.

He did wonder why she'd never done something like it to her own house, it would have stopped the royals and verat from finding her and trying to kill her but maybe there was a reason she hadn't. it was something he'd have to ask her when he got home. Assuming she was there. Adalind without a full-time job was kind of a handful. She seemed to have taken renovating his loft as her own pet project and if it kept her out of trouble an gave her something to do the he was all for it.

It helped that he'd get a nice (secure) place to live when she was done.

Possibly with her.


	12. Chapter 12

**Moment 12**

 _Realisation started with, of all things, a haircut._

It hadn't been a planned stop on his way to work but he'd been woken up before his alarm (again) by Adalind and he had some time to kill. He'd stopped for coffee and breakfast (he didn't currently have access to his kitchen) and he'd just wandered inside. The last time he'd cut his hair, he'd barely taken anything off it, Juliette had always liked his hair longer and he'd liked that it made her happy. He hadn't necessarily liked the hair, though.

Cutting his hair felt like shedding another tie to Juliette and he was all for that. That being said, just because he saw it as another cut tie to Juliette didn't mean he'd thought other people would see it that way. He should have realised that a man who had been married as many times as Hank had would see the obvious physical change and know it was related to his relationship status.

'Something going on between you and Juliette?' Hank asked as casually as he could when they were sitting in the car on the way to interview a witness.

Nick frowned. It occurred to him that he had ended his relationship with Juliette almost a month ago and hadn't made a point of telling Hank about it. Hank who he had shared all the major milestones of his relationship with Juliette with. Hell, Hank had been there the day he picked up the ring (and saw Adalind), how had it already been a month and he'd failed to mention it to Hank?

Nick wracked his brain trying to think about all their interactions outside of work for the last month, trying to figure out how it hadn't come up or how Hank might not have noticed. He supposed it helped that their wesen cases had been a little on the light side lately, and even the few wesen related cases they'd come across hadn't been wesen cases so much as ordinary cases involving wesen.

'We broke up,' he answered eventually, still trying to figure out if he'd mentioned Juliette at all in the last month. Or if he'd mentioned Adalind. He didn't think he had, at least not by name, that he was sure Hank would have made a point to mention.

They rode is silence while Hank digested the news. Nick wasn't sure if he was going to ask for details or if he'd think it was something he didn't need to know. He didn't know what he'd prefer. It wasn't that he'd been keeping his whatever it was with Adalind from Hank, in fact he'd never actually made a point of avoiding the topic if it came up he just hadn't mentioned her by name. Or gender, if he was thinking honestly about it. He may not have gone out of his way to hide what he was doing but he hadn't openly told Hank he was doing something with the woman who had literally left him for dead in her bed.

He decided taking the initiative here might be a good idea. 'I'm not the same man I was when we met and I guess things just petered out.'

Hank nodded like that was something he could understand and it probably was. 'Man, if you want to talk about it…' he trailed off but Nick understood.

'Thanks.' And then because he knew it was something Hank would understand, he brought up one of the things he'd been avoiding. 'I moved out and I've already got a new place but I haven't talked to Juliette yet about what we're going to do with the house.'

'Sell it,' Hank advised, immediately. 'Something like that's going to cause problems. It's just a huge pile of money tying you two together,' he added, the voice of experience.

Nick nodded. 'I know. But I've kind of been avoiding her since I ended things and now I'm not sure how I'm supposed to ring her up and tell her I need the money from the house because I'm renovating a loft into a fortress.'

Hank snorted. 'A fortress?' he repeated, glancing over at Nick in amusement.

Nick rolled his eyes and what he said next sounded careless and throw-away but he intended it to, his earlier thoughts playing on his mind. 'Adalind's words,' he informed Hank. 'She thinks I'm giving in to my grimm paranoia.'

As he knew he would, Hank latched onto her name. 'Adalind?' this time he sounded incredulous. 'You've been talking to Adalind?'

Nick nodded, unapologetic. 'I went to her when her mother put Juliette in the hospital.'

'That was months ago,' Hank pointed out. 'Why are you even still talking to her?'

Nick groaned, sinking further into is seat. 'I don't even know,' he admitted. 'She kind of snuck up on me.'

'Snuck up on you,' Hank repeated, tossing another glance Nick's way that seemed to take him in from head to toe. 'Man, tell me you're not sleeping with her.'

'I'm not sleeping with her,' he told Hank and then because he was being honest he added, 'well not at the moment.'

'At the moment.' Hank let out a grunt that said he wasn't stupid and he wasn't about to ignore that. 'You want to.' Hank shook his head. 'We're talking about Adalind here, the witch who dosed me with spelled cookies and then left me to die.'

'I know.' He did know and while he felt bad and he'd been furious with her at the time and he did know that Hank had every right to be pissed at her, Nick himself had done a lot worse to Adalind and had a lot worse done to him.

It didn't exactly make it better but it did make a sick sort of sense between them. He did something to her, she did something to him in retaliation or vice versa. It was just how their relationship had always been. Now they limited themselves to snark and (mostly) empty threats of violence. It was weird but it worked.

'Man,' Hank said and his words weren't quite angry but they were edging toward it, 'I hope you know what you're doing.'

'Oh, I've got no damn idea,' Nick replied but it was almost cheerful.

 _It progressed with some serious stubble._

It wasn't a conscious choice to stop shaving so much as it was extremely difficult to get into his bathroom at the moment and Adalind had kind of made a comment about the stubble being sexy and, well, that had just seemed like reason enough not to shave.

And wondering about Adalind thinking he looked sexy with the rough unshaved jaw and shorter hair was the kind of distraction he needed right then, given that he'd finally sucked it up and asked Juliette to meet for coffee. He'd been very clear when he left the initial message that coffee wasn't code for getting back together, it was because they really needed to talk about the house, but he wasn't even sure that was something he needed to worry about.

Rosalee had seen Juliette twice since the night she'd witnessed him killing those four men and she hadn't been able to give Nick a clear idea of where his ex-girlfriend's head was at. Only offering the observation that whatever had happened that night had shaken Juliette but that she was trying to get passed it. Nick didn't much care if she got passed it, to be honest, he just needed it not to interfere with separating their assets.

Of course, Juliette, like Hank, knew him well and so when he slid into the chair opposite her in the small coffee shop near her vet practice, her eyebrows scrunched and she frowned at him, eyes roving as they took in his appearance. He knew how he looked, rougher than he'd been at any time in their relationship. Rosalee said it looked like he'd finally lost his boyish innocence and Monroe made a crack about him becoming the traditional dark and brooding grimm. Or a hardened cop.

Nick had rolled his eyes but when Adalind had agreed with their assessment he'd found himself unable to argue. It did feel like he'd finally embraced what it meant to be a grimm and if doing so meant that he shed those last few traces of innocence then he was okay with it.

And he wasn't about to explain any of that to Juliette, so he ignored the obvious unspoken question and got right down to business.

 _It all came together with a bang._

There was a hole in his living room wall and Adalind was wielding a sledge hammer. He thought about asking questions, considered how that conversation would go and realised it didn't matter.

'Hey,' she let the sledge hammer drop to the floor when she heard him come in and smiled at him. 'How was your day?'

For a moment, Nick could only look at her, take in the well worn jeans with the holes in the knees, the old grey t-shirt with paint spatters obscuring a faded print on the front and the sneakers with yet more paint and the way she'd tied her up in a messy bun and the only thing he could think about was how much he wanted her.

'Nick?'

Apparently he'd been quiet for too long, staring at her as he realised just how much he'd come to like having her in his life.

He crossed the room in three long strides, hands cupping her face as he bent to touch her lips with his own. She sank into the kiss, letting the handle of the sledge hammer fall from her grip as she reached up to wrap her arms around his back.

'I want you,' he murmured against her lips.

'I'm getting that impression,' she replied, lips lifting in a grin.

He huffed a laugh, breaking the kiss to rest his forehead against her own. 'I think I'm falling in love with you.'

'I'm very loveable.'

He laughed again, the response so typically Adalind. 'Move in with me.'

'Not until you have a functioning bathroom.'

With another laugh he threw her over his shoulder and carried her off to his bed.


	13. Chapter 13

**a/n:** My sincerest apologies for missing a week, my tablet finally died and i was forced to replace it (with a pretty new laptop that functions so really the only one complaining here is my bank account). Here's a new chapter that probably should contain smut but i just wasn't feeling up to writing it - and you'll understand what i mean when i get there why it should be smut. Please let me know your thoughts!

 **Moment 13**

It was one of those days that started out so normal (well normal for Nick) that he really should have known something was going to happen. He just hadn't expected that something to be a confrontation with Captain Renard.

He hadn't expected it to happen in the woods outside his trailer either.

'Looking for something?' Nick asked, startling Renard which wasn't something he'd thought he'd manage.

He and Monroe had come to the trailer to check up on something for Rosalee – for once it wasn't case related, just a customer and friend of Rosalee's – only to find Renard sneaking up to the trailer. He and Monroe had slipped up behind him, waited for him to start his attempt to break in and then Nick had spoken.

'I was looking for you,' Renard tried to explain but Nick just stared at him.

When it didn't look like Renard was going to offer up a more satisfying explanation (was there even one?) Nick spoke again, 'If you're going to give me some bullshit explanation, you can save it, I know who you are.'

Renard expression tightened. 'You don't know anything.'

'I can see how you'd think that,' Monroe murmured.

'What do you want?'

Renard hesitated, apparently debating whether or not he was going to try and explain away his presence in the woods at dusk on property that wasn't his. Nick could see the moment Renard decided against trying that tactic, could see the moment Renard realised it wouldn't work and so he knew he wasn't about to like the next words out of his captain's mouth.

'If you truly know who I am then you know what I want.'

Nick shrugged. 'There are a lot of things in that trailer you could want, plenty of things to give you the kind of power you need to protect yourself and take the control you want from your father.'

It was small, barely noticeable, but Nick caught the slight tensing of Renard's shoulders, the way his eyes widened before they narrowed slightly. 'The key.'

Nick nodded. 'We need to talk. Meet us at the Spice Shop.'

He didn't wait to see if Renard would agree to his request, not that it was much of a request. He and Monroe entered the trailer making a point to close the door behind them. It wasn't a surprise though, when thirty minutes after they returned to the Spice Shop Renard walked through the door.

The tension in the air was thick as Rosalee led Renard through to the side room. Knowing what he did about Renard's role in Marie's death, in Adalind's love spell and just generally his manipulative relationship with Adalind (and how he slept with her mother), didn't exactly have Nick feeling in a cooperative mood. Still, he'd managed to last the past four months working under Renard without letting it get to him, he could manage to be civil for one meeting.

'You know who I am,' Renard acknowledged as an opener.

'And you know who I am,' Nick countered.

'How long?' Renard asked.

'Four months, give or take.' He eyed Renard warily where he stood at the head of the table Nick, Rosalee and Monroe along the side with their backs to the side door. Nick wondered if he shouldn't have called Hank but then this was really more of a Grimm thing than a cop thing and he wasn't sure how this was going to go, given the kinds of things Renard had done for power, Nick wasn't sure the captain would be leaving this meeting alive. It would be best if Hank weren't around for any fight that wound up with Renard dead.

Was it wrong that Nick was secretly hoping there would be a fight that would see the captain dead?

'How long did you think you could control me?' Nick wanted to know, honestly curious. Adalind had shared all she knew about Renard's plans for Nick and Portland (which wasn't much) and Nick couldn't say he liked the part where he became a weapon Renard could point at his own enemies.

'I never wanted to control you,' Renard dismissed.

Nick rolled his eyes. 'What other reason could you possibly have for lying to me for months?'

'You're a grimm,' Renard replied as if that answered every question he might have.

Nick rolled his eyes again and he might have said more only the shop door burst open and Adalind stumbled inside shouting for him.

'Nick!' Her eyes locked onto his as she staggered into the room. He wasn't sure she'd even seen anyone else, the way she was looking at him.

Her skin was flushed, cheeks red and she looked sweaty as though she'd run the whole way to the shop, although from where Nick had no idea. He was moving toward her before he'd even consciously decided to move. Adalind moaned as he came around the table but took a step back when he got too close.

'What the hell happened?' he asked, taking another step forward and watching her step back again.

She moaned again, inhaling deeply. 'You smell really good.'

'Thanks?' It was more of a question because she really didn't look good. He reached out a hand to her, placing the back of his left hand against her forehead when she didn't move away from him. 'You're burning up.'

Adalind laughed but there was no humour in it and it quickly turned into a moan. A moan that didn't actually sound pained now that he was hearing it up close. It almost sounded like…

'We need to have sex,' she gasped, pressing forward into him.

'What?' he asked and then it was his turn to moan when she nipped lightly at the curve of his neck and shoulder, her hands going for his belt. 'Stop that.'

'I can't!' she moaned, dropping her head onto his chest. 'I ran into a cupiditas!'

'You what?' Nick asked, arm around her waist as she sagged against him. Her skin was really hot to the touch.

'Oh no,' Rosalee gasped behind him. 'Nick, she's not kidding.'

'What?' he looked over his shoulder at Rosalee and Monroe, caught Renard looking at him with narrowed calculating eyes.

'Wesen,' Rosalee explained, 'they deal in love and lust and like to make you burn when threatened. I think this is one of their powders, it's kind of like a pollen.'

'Sex pollen?' Nick asked incredulously, for clarification, which earned him a weird look from Rosalee, and Monroe and he wasn't about to explain about his ex before Juliette's late-night reading habits.

Adalind moaned again. 'Please, we don't have much time.'

Looking alarmed, Rosalee asked, 'How long do you have left?'

'How long?' Nick repeated. 'What?'

'I don't know!' Adalind almost whined. 'Twenty minutes maybe?'

'I'm confused,' said Monroe.

'Okay. Nick, we don't have time.' Rosalee looked around and then, coming to a decision, she looked back at Nick and Adalind. 'The basement. Now.'

'Seriously?' That was Monroe but he was only voicing what Nick was thinking.

'She needs to have sex, Nick. Now.'

Nick looked down at Adalind and shrugged. 'Okay then.'

He guided her backward toward the basement, struggling not to find the humour in a situation that literally had him slipping off to the basement for a quickie.

And flaunting his relationship with Adalind in front of the man who broke her heart and kind of ruined her life. That was just a bonus.


	14. Chapter 14

**a/n:** A few hours late but i've had appointments back to back this morning. Enjoy this one, I think you'll like the ending.

 **Moment 14**

Something was digging into his back. He reached around and tugged a book out from beneath his shoulder, tossing the volume over his head onto the other end of the table as he waited for his heart to slow back to something close to normal. Beside him, Adalind was breathing slow and deep, trying to catch her breath now that the overheated frenzy of the honest-to-god sex pollen had released its grip on her.

'You okay?' he asked, reaching for her hand and drawing it to his mouth to kiss the tips of her fingers.

She hummed an affirmative, eyes closed. They were quiet for a moment before she said, 'I should be mad about getting dosed by that cupiditas but I can't quite seem to care right now.'

Nick laughed softly. He couldn't argue either. They'd never lacked passion or fire in the bedroom (or any of the other places they'd had sex) but that had been something else. He wasn't going to think on whether it had more to do with the fact that it had been an urgent rough fuck or that it was the knowledge that his friends and Renard were upstairs trying not to listen that had made it so much _more_.

'We should go back upstairs.'

Adalind grunted her agreement, pushing into a sitting position before she pushed off the table to land softly on her feet. She stumbled when she realised she was only wearing one shoe and her jeans were tangled around one ankle. She laughed softly and he grinned at her, tugging his own pants back up and fastening them.

She moved passed him toward the stairs. But he tugged her back for a quick kiss. 'You sure you're okay?'

She nodded. 'Sexual release causes a whole bunch of fun chemicals that clear the effects of the pollen.'

'That's not what I meant.'

Adalind rolled her eyes. 'He messed with the wrong hexenbiest,' she assured him. 'He'll get what's coming to him.'

'The cop in me is going to pretend you didn't say that.'

'That's probably for the best.'

'You want me to kill him?' he asked as he followed her up the stairs.

'Nah,' she answered. 'I got this.'

He didn't doubt her.

She stopped right before she opened the door. 'Did I see Sean up there?'

Nick just nodded, stepping by her to open the door. 'Found him trying to break into the trailer.'

Adalind nodded back. 'We really need to finish that safe room I've been working on before someone else gets lucky and finds the trailer.'

That brought Nick up short. 'What?'

Adalind rolled her eyes again. 'Honestly, didn't you look at those plans I had drawn up?'

He had and now that he was thinking about it, he realised this was what she'd been building in the warehouse portion of their factory. He'd been more focused on how she was expanding the loft, all the extra rooms and the additional bathroom she'd declared they needed.

And then he remembered seeing Henrietta and Adalind working some serious mojo in the middle of the space and he realised that she really had been building a safe room. He'd just gotten so used to her taking charge that he hadn't thought twice about what she was doing. She always consulted with him on the choices she was making and so he should have known that's what she was building only he'd gotten distracted by her request to choose a colour for the leather sofa (it'll be easier to wipe the blood off of apparently) and then she'd thrown him with a question about polished concrete and he'd been knee deep in a murder investigation (at one point, literally) and so he'd just nodded along with her words.

He trusted her. He was sure it would be amazing. Besides, Adalind really was a big nerd, she'd likely end up spending more time than anyone tucked away with his ancestor's books, he had no doubt she'd do a good job of the safe room she was building for that reason alone.

When they stepped back onto the shop floor there was an awkward moment where Monroe didn't seem able to meet Nick's eye but Rosalee was more forthright about it.

'It sounds like it worked,' she said in the same no-nonsense tone she'd used to order them into the basement.

Adalind nodded cheerfully. 'Sex pollen cleansed. Orgasms were had.'

Monroe made a choking noise and laughed a little nervously. 'Good,' he said. 'That's great.'

Nick felt the corners of his mouth lifting up in a tiny smile, amused by his friend's awkward response. He was surprised to find he wasn't all that uncomfortable himself. He supposed he'd had weirder things happen to him as a grimm, some of them involved Adalind so he was used to just rolling with it.

'Yes,' Adalind agreed. 'It's great that I didn't die.'

Nick turned to look at her sharply. 'What?'

Adalind shrugged. 'You have sex, or you die. It's not like you were going to turn me down,' she pointed out. 'When have you ever turned me down?'

Nick made a face at that, but he couldn't argue. Even when he was with Juliette and he'd hated her he'd failed rather spectacularly to turn her down. Not that he could regret that, it did get them to this point.

This time it was Renard who laughed but there was nothing nervous about this one, it was dark, mocking, and also a little angry. 'This is how you knew who I was?' he asked, eyes narrowed on Adalind.

They all turned to look at him and nodded, Adalind had been the source of all their information on Renard but Nick had done a little snooping with Hank's help to prove it all true.

'What do you want, Renard?' Nick asked but it seemed like his captain wasn't done with Adalind.

'Sleeping with a grimm, Adalind?' he sneered. 'I suppose that's one way to control him.'

Nick stared at Renard, his eyes hard and cold and every bit the grimm Renard seemed intent on controlling. 'It's certainly more enjoyable than whatever you had to offer.'

His words took Renard by surprise, the captain obviously under the impression his words were cutting, that they would cast doubt on Nick and his relationship with Adalind. It just proved how little Renard actually knew about the man he hoped to control. Just reinforced what Nick had already seen from the man.

How had he ever thought it was a good idea to order someone to kill Aunt Marie if he wanted a chance to control Nick? He was a cop, for god's sake, a homicide detective. He'd never have stopped looking for answers. Hell, he hadn't stopped looking for them until Adalind had handed them over and laid it all out for him.

'I'm not going to be your puppet, Captain,' Nick informed him. Between Monroe, Rosalee and now Adalind, Nick had the help and advice of people he trusted a hell of a lot more than he trusted the shady man who lied and tried to manipulate him.

Renard considered his words carefully before he spoke. 'I don't need a puppet,' he tried. 'There are some powerful people who would like to see me dead.'

Adalind rolled her eyes at that, beating Nick to a response. 'You don't need protection,' Adalind scoffed. 'The queen is dead, Sean, no one is trying to kill you.'

'I'm not a grimm, you're not a half zauberbiest royal,' Nick said. 'I'm just a cop and you're just my captain and I think it's time for you to leave.'

He wanted to say more but Nick could acknowledge that he knew when to concede defeat, or at least make a strategic retreat. He nodded once in a way that said this wasn't over and left. Nick was sure this confrontation wouldn't be the last and he had no idea what work would be like in the coming days and weeks but right in that moment he didn't care.

He just wanted to go home and shower and maybe get some dinner. Big, potentially life changing conversations with wesen could wait until tomorrow.

At least that had been the plan.

When they were lying in bed later, drifting on the verge of sleep in that calm that he'd come to learn came from sleeping beside someone who was just as capable of taking care of themselves, Adalind made a startled sound and her eyes snapped open, jerking him away from sleep into wakefulness.

'Oh,' there was a pause and then, 'crap.'

'What?' he asked, rising onto his elbows, instantly alert at the strange hint of panic in her voice.

'I'm pregnant.'

' _What?!_ '


	15. Chapter 15

**a/n:** Well, this one got out of my control kind of fast but i rolled with it. Thanks for the amazing reviews!

 **Moment 15**

They waited two weeks to take the text that just confirmed what they already knew. By that point, Henrietta had already presented Nick with a novelty coffee mug that declared him the best dad in the world and spent a good five minutes cackling her delight at how the world wasn't ready for a little hexengrimm and she couldn't wait to have front row seats to the absolutely amazing things they could come to expect.

Because any kid of Nick and Adalind's was sure to be one powerful force of nature.

From the moment Adalind realised she was pregnant she'd been working twice as hard to convert the loft and the rest of the factory into what she liked to call their "fome". She'd doubled the efforts and the number of people coming in and out of the factory and when Nick had questioned the wisdom of that she'd admitted Henrietta had spelled the workman who had no idea where they were spending their days (or nights in some cases) but that they needed the fome to be ready as soon as possible and this was the best way to go about it.

'Because, Nick,' Adalind had explained when he pointed out they still had the better part of nine months to sort their shit out, 'There are a million and one things I'd like to do before I'm too big to move and that doesn't even factor in the million things this baby is going to need.'

Which went a long way to explaining how he found himself standing in what had once been the factory work space beside his garage not even a month later staring around in awe at what Adalind and Henrietta had managed to achieve.

He felt a little bit like he was standing in the Beast's library from the Disney movie. All the walls were covered in towering bookcases, display cases and shelves of questionable products that were thankfully shelved high enough he wouldn't have to worry about grabby toddler hands. There was an honest-to-god ladder that could be moved from case to case to retrieve items stored higher up toward the high ceiling should there not be a handy hexenbiest to just float the desired text down.

There was a massive table in the centre of the room with comfortable chairs around it for research. A high workbench set up for Adalind's many (and often dubious) spells complete with burner and cauldron. His weapons were locked in a glass fronted cabinet or displayed on shelves and walls and in the far corner of the room was a spiral staircase that led up to their loft.

There was also a hidden door that led to a thoroughly warded vestibule which then opened out into the garage. From the garage, you wouldn't have any idea the door was there unless you specifically went looking for it.

Having a hexenbiest girlfriend had more than a few impressive perks.

Nick had no idea how long he stood at the foot of the staircase gaping around the room but it was long enough for Adalind to come looking for him.

'I haven't even finished unpacking the rest of my mother's books or your things from the trailer yet,' she told him, coming to rest just behind him on the last step and draping her arms over his shoulders so she could rest her chin over his shoulder and admire her own work.

And she should admire it because she'd done an amazing job.

Such and amazing job and in such a short amount of time that he knew he'd played right into her hand when she grinned at him and told him, 'Now imagine what we could get done if only you helped out.'

Which was how he went from sipping coffee from his (favourite) novelty mug while he admired her brilliant work turning the factory into the greatest repository of Grimm and hexenbiest knowledge the world may ever see to wielding a paint roller in a room he'd previously not seen a reason for and now realised would be their first child's bedroom.

'I got an email from my mom last night,' Nick remembered suddenly.

Adalind looked up from where she was taping up the next wall Nick would have to paint and frowned. 'Is everything okay?'

Nick nodded. 'She's joined up with the Resistance.'

'Your mother has?' Adalind sounded surprised and Nick didn't blame her. Nick didn't know much about the woman his mother was now, at least not when she wasn't beheading wesen and chasing down the men who killed his father, but he didn't think joining forces with the people actively fighting against the Royals was a good way to stay under the radar.

Assuming she still needed to. Nick wasn't too clear on where his mother stood now that the men who killed her husband were dead and she seemed to have dealt with the coins. Wherever she stood though, it didn't seem to be coming back to Portland to be around him.

Not that he was sure how to feel about that. He didn't know if he wanted her to come stay, or if suddenly having her around would feel too much like trying to make up for lost time he wasn't sure he wanted to be making up for. There was a part of him that was still bitter she'd let him think she was dead for so many years.

Knowing all of this, Adalind could understand some of what he was feeling, how much it hurt knowing that his mother had made the choice to stay in Europe now that the coins were destroyed. She simply said, 'Did you tell her about the baby?'

Nick shook his head. 'It's not the kind of thing you tell someone in an email. Besides, I didn't think we were telling anyone yet.'

'Your mom isn't just anyone,' Adalind reasoned. 'I get it, though.'

They fell back into a comfortable silence as Adalind finished taping up and Nick went back to smoothing a coat of what he would call white (but Adalind had informed him wasn't white at all) onto the first wall of what was soon to be his baby's nursery.

Adalind's amused voice broke into his thoughts. 'You've got panicked dad face again.'

'I do not,' Nick replied quickly and without any real conviction. Ever since that moment in bed when Adalind had realised their sex pollen driven unprotected sex had resulted in some life changing cell division he'd had moments of getting lost in thought about the implications of a baby. A baby that was part him and part Adalind and just, you know, a baby in general because he'd kind of thought that's where his life was headed but that was when he'd been in a stable relationship for years and he'd planned to propose, not when he'd only been in a relationship for months and his life was a chaotic mess of wesen and police work.

'I know this wasn't exactly planned,' Adalind said and she'd said the same thing to him multiple times in the last month, like she somehow thought he'd run now that there was this big scary commitment hanging over his head.

'I want to marry you.'

'What?' Adalind squeaked.

'Not like, right now,' he hastily explained, aware he'd just blurted out what could be construed as a marriage proposal. 'Just,' he searched for some way to explain himself that would make sense of the jumbled thoughts that were trying to spill from his mouth without permission from his brain but gave up and just said, 'I love you and I know we always do things backwards but at some point I'd actually like to marry you.'

Adalind studied him thoughtfully for a moment, eyes seeking any sign that he was just saying that because, well, panicked dad face, but he knew she wouldn't find any and when she smiled brightly he knew she understood exactly where he was coming from.

She still managed to surprise him by saying, with a shrug, 'I'm free tomorrow.'


	16. Chapter 16

**a/n:** You guys have been amazing! Thank you for the wonderful reviews, the thoughtful comments and questions and all the wonderful favourites and follows.

 **Moment 16**

Rosalee placed the steaming cup of tea on the table in front of Wu and smiled gently. He looked up at her with wide eyes that darted all over her face and the room around him before he looked down at the cup and murmured a strained thank you.

Nick winced. He felt kind of bad for Wu and he was glad Rosalee was the one here with him making the explanations go smoother. The fuchsbau was a lot easier to handle than the hexenbiest who had inadvertently been his first woge. Not that it had been Adalind's fault. She'd just been in a car accident, accidentally killed a teenage girl who was being chased through the woods and right in front of her car. It was pure luck that Wu had been sitting at the T-intersection and witnessed the accident. What wasn't so lucky was how an enraged Adalind had immediately got out of her wrecked car and, well, the only way Nick could think to describe it, was slaughtered the guy who had been chasing the girl with a gun.

Wu had witnessed it all. He'd held it together long enough to call it in and restrain Adalind which hadn't gone down particularly well with her. Or Nick who'd turned up on scene after Wu called it in and had immediately spotted Adalind sitting on the side of the road in the wet grass in hand cuffs and covered in blood and mud and kind of lost his cool.

It hadn't been Wu's fault; he'd witnessed a crime and then an even more horrific crime and he'd done what his training demanded of him. Nick just hadn't handled seeing his pregnant girlfriend in handcuffs all that well. Especially when she was covered in dirt and blood and looking particularly miserable with a massive bruise blooming on her face from the air bags in her car which had deployed when the teenage girl had rolled up the hood of her car, shattered her windshield and then bounced along the roof to land broken and bloody on the road.

To say Adalind had been mad when she'd emerged from her car and seen the man lurking in the shadows was an understatement. Wu's explanation of what had happened sounded brutal. The fact that Nick hadn't been surprised by what Adalind was capable of and that he'd immediately demanded the handcuffs be removed had required a leap of faith that Wu took only when Nick had promised to explain everything.

And he had which was why instead of being at home with Adalind making sure she really was okay and that she didn't have a concussion, he was at the Spice Shop with Rosalee trying to make Wu understand what he'd seen so that he didn't arrest Adalind for murder.

As gentle and kind and nonthreatening as Rosalee could be, Wu was still shaken, and Nick wasn't sure if he'd be writing this one off like he did so many of their wesen cases or if he'd be visiting Adalind in prison. Or worse, if he'd have to do something drastic to buy Wu's silence.

Because he would.

He really hoped he didn't have to though.

The door of the shop opened, and Monroe came in, followed by Hank and Adalind. Monroe was holding a couple of bags of take-out and his steps were hesitant. Rosalee glanced up at him with a smile and nodded to let him know it was okay to come in. Nick tried not to be amused that Wu didn't flinch when he saw Monroe or Hank but that his eyes widened in alarm when he saw Adalind.

Not that he wasn't wrong to view her as a threat, of all the people in the room she was probably the most dangerous. It was just most people didn't see it that way. They saw the petite blonde and dismissed her. When she was accompanied by Hank and Monroe she definitely wouldn't have been the one most people were weary of.

'Hi,' Adalind greeted when she reached him, and he turned to her and gave her a quick once over. The bruise blooming over her nose and eyes wasn't nearly as bad as it might have been if she were anyone or (thing) other than a hexenbiest. 'I'm fine,' she assured him, seeing his worry. 'How are things here?'

Nick shrugged, turning back to Wu to see that the sergeant had been watching their exchange closely. When he realised he'd been caught staring, he coughed to clear his throat and offered a croaky, 'Hello.'

Adalind smiled gently but she was smart enough not to move any closer to Wu until they were all sure he could handle it.

'You changed your face,' Wu stated, voice sounding far away and incredulous like he was still having trouble making sense of what he'd seen despite the lengthy explanation and demonstration he'd been given by both Nick and Rosalee.

'I woged, yes,' Adalind acknowledged. 'I was kind of mad when I realised that man had been chasing that girl and that was why she ran in front of my car.' Adalind shrugged. 'I just reacted.'

'You reacted by killing him.'

'Yes,' Adalind confirmed before Nick could think to stop her. 'The world isn't as black and white as you were always taught,' she told Wu, though not unkindly.

He nodded but Nick could see he was having a hard time accepting her words as the truth Nick had come to accept months before. His easy acceptance of the things he had to do as a Grimm was perhaps more indicative of the kind of man he was than any inherent Grimm behaviour (seeing as he still preferred to ask questions before killing people) but it was still an acceptance he'd found easy to come to. Wu had been a cop longer than Nick and didn't have the heritage and nature backing him up.

Nick really hoped Wu trusted his and Hank's judgement enough to let them prove Adalind had done what was necessary. He didn't think it would take much.

And it didn't.

With Monroe's help, after they'd eaten dinner they went back to the scene of the crime and followed the scent trail to a rundown farm house. What they found there added credence to Nick's assurance that Adalind had acted justly.

There were three other girls locked up in a storm cellar. Chained to walls in cells that were dirty and dark. When the ambulances arrived, when more police arrived to help, the truth slowly came out.

One girl might have died, unjustly on the road, but Adalind's actions had led to three more being saved and that meant something.

It was certainly enough for Wu to come around and be willing to talk and learn more about wesen and the true nature of the crimes Nick and Hank often investigated.

Not that Wu was the only one. Adalind had never been afraid of killing, she'd done her fair share (and probably a few other peoples as well) of horrible and violent acts but she'd been shaken by the death of that girl. Her violent punishment of the man responsible showed that. Saving those other three girls eased the guilt she felt for the death of the girl on the road.

As they lay in bed that night, Nick thought about how differently things might have gone if Adalind hadn't been on that road, if it had been Juliette driving out to the trailer. It was the first time in months he'd really thought about his ex and this time, like all the others, he was so grateful that he'd found Adalind, that he'd found a woman who could stumble out of a wrecked car, face all bruised and bloody and leap straight into a fight with a guy twice her size without batting an eye.

Or breaking a sweat.

God he loved her, and yeah, he was going to marry her.

'You free Thursday?' he asked, words a soft murmur against the bare skin of her shoulder in the dark.

'I'm having coffee with Henrietta at nine.'

Nick nodded. 'Think she'd want to come and witness our marriage?'

Adalind smiled. 'Yes. Yes, she would.'

'Okay then.'


	17. Chapter 17

**a/n:** You're all going to be looking at this chapter thinking where's the rest of it. I'm not sorry. This wasn't what i planned but i kind of love it.

 **Moment 17**

'No ID on the victim, prints aren't in the system, but we do have a business card for a boutique downtown with an appointment time. The store isn't open yet but as soon as it is I'll – what the hell is that?!'

Nick, who'd been crouching beside the body (male, mid-twenties, currently missing all of his toes and most of his right hand), glanced tiredly up at Wu at the startled exclamation and frowned, glancing back down at the body to try and see what Wu was seeing.

'What?' he asked when he didn't see anything that would cause such an alarmed response.

Hank, who had just sidled up to the both of them (they'd come in separate cars for once), nodded a greeting and started to tell them what he'd got from the uniforms canvasing the area when he noticed Wu's look. He looked down at the body as well and asked, 'Something we need to – man, what the hell is that?'

Frustrated, Nick stood to his full height. 'What am I missing?'

'I'm sorry,' Wu said, with a great deal of sarcasm, 'are we not going to talk about the gold elephant in the room?'

'The what?' Nick replied blankly.

'Guess we're not,' Hank said, though now he was sounding amused rather than surprised.

'I'm lost.'

'I'd have said you found something,' Wu drawled.

'I don't know,' Hank teased, 'he definitely lost our invitations.'

Nick glanced down at his left hand as his tired brain finally clicked onto what the hell they were talking about. To be fair, he was running on about thirty minutes of sleep and he'd just sort of forgotten he had a wedding ring now on his finger. Not that he'd forgotten the wedding. No, that was definitely not something he was about to forget.

Adalind had looked beautiful. Adalind always looked beautiful but he'd felt the need to tell her as she stood with him before the celebrant. Probably because she was soaking wet, mud caked in her hair and on her clothes, make-up that had lost a fight with the torrential rain dribbling down her cheeks. He knew he hadn't looked much better and he'd been bleeding from a stab wound below his ribs to boot.

Henrietta had looked just as bad, as did the poor waitress they'd saved who was now standing as their second witness.

The day hadn't exactly gone as planned, that was for sure. The simple morning ceremony they'd been planning to have with Henrietta standing witness in the court house (he'd contemplated asking Monroe and Rosalee to come along but the day had run away with them before he'd even had the chance) had turned into a typical day of wesen weirdness until it was three in the morning, bodies were everywhere they were covered in mud, soaked through from the rain and it was just all so very them that Henrietta had made a few calls, called in some favours and there they were.

The front porch of the celebrant's house wasn't exactly the ideal location for a wedding. The guy had barely stepped out of the house and the whole ceremony had been conducted in his fluffy terry cloth dressing gown and a pair of novelty slippers he claimed his husband and kids had conspired to buy him, on the welcome mat, barely sheltered from the rain.

They'd exchanged vows, signed the marriage certificate and he'd gone back to bed while Henrietta promised to take care of the paperwork (and the waitress) so the two of them could at least have a couple of hours quality time together before he had to get up and go to work.

It was nobody's idea of a wedding but it was everything Nick could have asked for because it was exactly the kind of thing that happened to them.

When Nick first started planning his proposal to Juliette, he'd pictured a big wedding, lots of guests and food and dancing and Juliette in a beautiful white dress while he was in his best suit with probably Hank beside him.

Now, the idea of all that fuss and all those people made his skin crawl.

He'd gotten married in dirty jeans and mud caked boots with rain in his hair and blood on his hands to a woman whose own hands were covered in blood, whose boots were just as muddy with ripped jeans and mud streaked hair and he honestly couldn't imagine it any other way.

Standing before that celebrant they'd been exactly the people they were promising to be for the rest of their lives, the good, the bad and everything in between. Nick loved Adalind more than he'd ever loved anyone before and he knew she loved him just as much. They'd stood on that porch as the kind of equals he'd always known they were and promised to keep on living and fighting and loving together.

That was perfect.

But he didn't tell Hank or Wu that, instead all he said was, 'Oh, Adalind and I got married this morning.'

…and then he turned back to the body at his feet because there was a crime to be solved if he was ever going to get the chance to see his wife sometime soon.

His wife. He liked the sound of that.


	18. Chapter 18

**a/n:** I am so incredibly sorry for the delay. Life got in the way (as it does) but hopefully this chapter makes up for it - at least a little.

 **Moment 18**

Admittedly, starting the conversation with an exchange of pleasantries might have made for an easier go of it but when Nick walked through the door of the Spice Shop it had sort of just come out in a rush.

'Adalind and I got married this morning.'

Rosalee sort of stared at him for a while and then she yelled for Monroe with wide eyes and that particular pitch to her voice that usually meant something bad was happening and he should get to the front of the store as fast as possible. Which was why Monroe hustled into the front of the shop and then froze looking confused when he didn't see any cause for Rosalee's alarm other than Nick. And Rosalee and Monroe had been dating for long enough now that he knew Rosalee saw nothing about Nick to be concerned about.

'Nick and Adalind got married this morning,' Rosalee supplied.

Apparently, the news was so astonishing Monroe couldn't do anything more than gape at Nick for an awkwardly long time before he finally managed to utter a, 'Dude!'

Nick, hoping to cut through the kind of questions that asked if he were joking/serious/crazy just held up his hand to show the gold band on his finger.

'Uh…' Monroe trailed off with nothing to say after that and he looked helplessly at Rosalee before he turned back to Nick and offered up, 'Congratulations?'

Nick shrugged. 'I'm happy about it.'

'And you're not under any sort of spell?' Rosalee checked.

Nick rolled his eyes. 'No,' he said firmly. 'No spell.'

There was another awkward silence while Monroe and Rosalee stared at him trying to take in the news and then Rosalee seemed to make a decision because she came around the counter and wrapped him in a tight hug.

'I really am happy for you, Nick. I know how much you care about Adalind.'

Taking his cue from Rosalee, Monroe gave Nick a hug and then stepped back because he still didn't quite know how he was supposed to be taking the news. That was fine with Nick, he could understand perfectly how it might seem like this happened out of the blue and Monroe and Rosalee had at least encountered Nick and Adalind together on more than one occasion and been exposed to their relationship before it was even really a proper relationship.

'Listen, we've finally finished the renovations on the loft and we'd like to have everyone over for dinner to celebrate.'

'The renovations or the wedding?' Monroe asked.

'Both,' Nick answered. 'For the first time in months I'm not living in a construction zone, I think that's worth celebrating and you're going to want to see what Adalind's done with all her mother's books and her hexenbiest stuff.'

He wrote down the address for them on a notepad Rosalee had on the counter, with quick instructions to memorise it because within moments of the words being written down, they'd started to dribble down the page.

'Neat trick,' Rosalee murmured.

Nick nodded. 'Adalind made some powerful enemies when she refused to work for the royals, and we all know how much they like me. She got a hexenbiest friend of hers to help put up some pretty intense protections around the place.'

'Right.'

Amused by Monroe's dubious stare at the paper and the jumble of letters and numbers at the bottom of the page, Nick, said, 'Tomorrow night at seven?'

'We'll be there,' Rosalee answered for the both of them.

And they were. They arrived just after Hank and Wu, pulling up in front of the closed garage door. Nick saw them arrive on the security monitor and went down to greet them, instructing them to pull their cars inside when he did, lest anyone see two cars lurking where they shouldn't be. Although, honestly, the dim glow from the upstairs windows already suggested there was someone home. He supposed the cars just gave them somewhere to start looking.

And that might have been his paranoia talking again.

Once they'd pulled their cars inside behind his and Adalind's, they got out and looked around. Adalind's touch wasn't as obvious down here but it was still there to see if you knew what the place had looked like before. She'd made sure to clean out all the leftover tools and equipment that had been left behind in the factory, done some painting of her own and put in some shelving along one wall where she'd safely stored the few tools Nick actually owned and the surprisingly larger collection of her own. Adalind, it turned out, was kind of handy. Though knowing her as well as he did know, Nick wasn't all that surprised.

The elevator had been touched up, the doors leading into the garage had been replaced with sturdier ones that even the toughest wesen would have trouble getting through. He ushered his friends into the elevator and tugged down the new grate that had been installed. This one was reminiscent of old elevators from the 20's although due to the size of the elevator, the grate (made to look like old cast iron – it was a lot tougher) still slid upward.

Behind him, Nick was aware of his friends exchanging looks. He didn't blame them; this whole thing did have a sort of murder feel to it. Like he and Adalind were luring them somewhere to kill them. Heck, if he'd been any other grimm he might very well have been. Attitudes changed, though, when the elevator stopped and he lifted the grate to reveal a homey and warm open living area with big kitchen, dining area and living room. From the elevator you could see up the steps into his and Adalind's ridiculously large bedroom and the archway that led into the new section of the loft Adalind had expanded over the rest of the factory space.

Adalind was placing some glasses on the table when they arrived and she moved to greet them with a smile and a, 'Welcome to our fome.' At their blank looks she elaborated, 'Because it's a cross between a fortress and a home.'

Nick dropped an amused kiss on her temple as he moved into the loft. 'How about a tour?

They took a quick peek into the master bedroom, admiring the open space and the enormous walk-in robe Adalind had constructed (that was mostly Hank) before Nick took them through the new space, showing off the two new bedrooms, the additional bathroom and the office space before he led them back into the main living space with a grin.

'This is my favourite part,' he admitted before he slammed back the metal pin holding a steel door in place and slid the door back to reveal a dark stairwell. He reached a hand around the corner to flick on the light over the stairs and led the way down the spiral staircase into the library.

He flicked on more lights at the bottom and waited for everyone's reactions. Adalind came down the stairs last and moved in close to his side, looping an arm around his waist. He slid one around her shoulders, holding her close as his friends wandered around the space in awe.

'I think I want to live here,' Wu said eventually.

'Adalind,' Rosalee breathed her name in astonishment, 'this is amazing.'

Monroe trailed his fingers along the spines of books lined up on one of the shelves. 'Some of these are from the trailer,' he realised.

'The trailer, Adalind's own collection and all the things Catherine had stashed away in her house and dubious contents of her storage locker,' Nick explained. 'It's easier to get to than the trailer and it's a lot more secure.' He moved away from Adalind to another wall. 'And check this out.' He tugged on one side of a bookcase and the whole section swung forward revealing a small dark space. He stepped inside and pressed him hands against the far wall and it opened to reveal the garage.

'Wow,' Monroe exclaimed.

Hank seemed to be at a loss for words, admiring the display of weapons while Rosalee idly walked along the shelves displaying the various bottles and jars of Adalind's spell ingredients.

'Some of these are incredibly rare,' she murmured. 'And expensive.'

'Yeah,' Adalind agree. 'But some of them do some really nasty things, too.'

From upstairs came the ding of the oven timer. No one seemed in any hurry to go back upstairs and Nick laughed. 'Let's eat,' he said. 'You can come back down here later and admire it some more.'

'I was serious,' Wu muttered as he followed Adalind back up the stairs. 'I think I could live here.'

Adalind grinned. 'I'm planning on spending a while down here,' she admitted. 'I've been thinking about cataloguing the collection and transcribing a lot of it into some sort of online catalogue. It would be nice if Nick could just look something up on his phone while he's out on a case if one of us can't give him the answer or get here fast enough.'

Hank nodded thoughtfully. 'That's actually not a bad idea. It's a pain in the ass having to rely on trips out to the trailer if one of you doesn't already know the answer.'

'Yeah, well, I need a new project now that the loft is mostly finished. It's not really a good time to be looking for a new job but I need to do something to keep from going insane.'

'I had noticed Nick getting a lot less texts the last couple of months,' Hank laughed.

Adalind winced. 'I'm not very good without something to do.'

'Really?' Nick said. 'I hadn't noticed.'

She shot him a withering look and he grinned. It was kind of nice having his friends over for dinner to celebrate his new marriage and his new home. There was something freeing about watching Hank and Wu interact with Adalind with the same ease Monroe and Rosalee had developed with her. Especially given the things she'd done to the both of them under Renard's orders.

Now he'd just have to wait another month before they told them about the baby. He wondered if they'd take that as well as they'd taken the news he was married.


	19. Chapter 19

**a/n:** Thank you for wonderful reviews!

 **Moment 19**

Her name was Trubel. Nick had no difficulty believing that. All he'd wanted was a nice quiet weekend with Adalind. They'd booked a nice little cabin on a lake and after stocking the fridge there'd been plans to take off clothes and christen every surface available. There had not been plans to get tangled up in a murder. This was supposed to be their honeymoon. At least, a small version of it. Neither of them needed anything big and fancy and they'd been quite happy with the idea of getting away for a long weekend.

They hadn't even made it through town to the cabin when they got dragged into the investigation. Pulled over by the local sheriff who was checking cars, Nick's badge had made an appearance, a conversation was had and assurances that they didn't need any help from a city homicide cop because it was all pretty straight forward.

'We've got an ID on our suspect, Detective, you just enjoy your weekend!'

Nick, who hadn't offered any help at all, was perfectly happy to enjoy his weekend and trust that the local police had everything under control.

Which was a lie. As evidenced by the body lying in the middle of the long drive up to the cabin.

Adalind sighed. 'I'm not sure why I was expecting anything different. I did marry a grimm.'

Nick frowned at her, her annoyance seemed to be only skin deep, so he ended up grinning. 'Why do you assume my being a grimm is why this happened?'

'Because when things are my fault there's normally less blood and more weird hijinks.'

'Hijinks?' Nick repeated with a laugh.

He killed the engine and they both got out to inspect the body in the road. He couldn't have been dead for long, the blood oozing from the pulverised remains of his face was still, well, oozing. The body was still warm.

'You booked us a murder cabin,' Adalind huffed.

'I did not book us a murder cabin,' he replied, heavy on the sarcasm. 'I just booked us a beautiful and isolated cabin that has just been the victim of a nearby crime.'

She stared at him in disbelief.

'Yes, okay, I realise how that sounded.' He rolled his eyes.

'Want a weapon?'

'Did we bring weapons?' he countered.

Adalind pointed at him and said slowly, 'Grimm.' She turned her finger on herself. 'Hexenbiest. Of course, I bought weapons. Why didn't you?'

'I did. I bought you.'

Adalind laughed and leaned up to kiss him. 'You say the sweetest things.'

There was a pause while Nick looked down at the body. 'We don't know this is wesen related. Is he wesen?'

Adalind woged before she crouched down, stuck the tip of a pinkie in the man's blood and then touched her pinkie to her tongue. 'Blutbad.'

She shook off her woge and stood, Nick idly wondered what it said that he didn't even wince when she _tasted_ the blood from a fresh corpse.

Nick looked up the long drive and peered around into the woods. What he really wanted to do was drive around the body, head up to the cabin and get that nice weekend of naked fun he'd been planning. Of course, he knew he couldn't do that. As easily as the grimm side of him swept aside the murder of a man, the side of him that followed the law and wore a badge made him take out his phone and call it in.

It took far longer than either liked for the sheriff and his people to turn up and then they had to give statements and there was that suggestion again that he didn't need to help, that they had it under control only this time Nick could see it was a very bad attempt to not look like they needed help and that he was going to have to step in and offer assistance even if he didn't want to.

'I'm really sorry, Mrs Burkhardt,' the sheriff apologised to Adalind.

Adalind, taken aback by being addressed as, firstly, Mrs and secondly, Burkhardt, just waved away his apologies. 'I knew what I was getting into when I married him.' Then she managed to talk her way into keeping the car and being allowed to continue on up to the cabin while Nick helped work the scene and craft a plan of action.

(Of course, she got ambushed three steps inside the cabin, but he wouldn't know that until hours later when he finally extricated himself from the local investigation.)

The murder, Nick learned, was just the same as the first. Both victims were local men, both had girlfriends, ex-wives and kids. They were nice upstanding citizens. Nick wasn't sure how much of that he believed given that he hadn't met many blutbad who followed Monroe's vegetarian lifestyle. The more he tagged along (led) the investigation the more he was forced to consider that maybe they really were decent people and their deaths weren't motivated by the usual petty jealousy, cheating, murderous grudges or just general wesen mayhem.

With no leads and more questions than answers, Nick called it a night and the sheriff dropped him back at the cabin with a thank you for the help and a suggestion he'd call if they needed his advice.

Strangely, it hadn't occurred to Nick that he'd find a young dark-haired woman tied to a chair in the cabin's living room.

Funny that.

'Ah, Adalind?' he called out, shutting the front door behind him, grateful he hadn't invited the sheriff in.

The cabin wasn't large, he could see the kitchen and into the only bedroom from where he stood but he couldn't see Adalind.

'Nick?' He followed the sound of her voice (skirting the young woman and her murderous glare) out through a sliding door and onto the back porch where she was just finishing up splitting some wood for the cabin's fire.

She looked up at him when he came out and even in the dim light of the fading sunset, he could see the cut above her right eye and the bruise on her jaw. 'Why is there a woman tied up inside?' he asked, taking the logs she held out to him.

Adalind pointed back into the cabin with the axe. 'That's your killer.'

'Right.'

'She's a grimm.'

Nick's eyebrows shot up. 'Really?'

'Yes. Not that she knows that.'

'Oh.' He contemplated that for a while. 'And the reason she's tied to a chair…?'

Adalind swung the axe down and embedded it in the stump she'd been resting the logs on and wiped her hands on her jeans. 'She kept trying to kill me. It was easier this way.'

'Fair enough.'

He turned around to take the split logs inside. He ignored the woman in the chair until he'd added three to the fire and then he turned to face her, crossing the room to remove the gag Adalind had created out of a silk scarf he was sure she'd had other (though still bondage related) plans for later.

'What's your name?'

The woman glared at him but didn't say anything.

He held out his badge. 'Detective Nick Burkhardt,' he informed her then indicated Adalind with a nod of his head. 'My wife Adalind.'

'She's a monster!' the young woman snarled.

'She can be, yes,' Nick acknowledged.

Adalind wasn't offended.

'She told me you're a grimm.'

'Don't call me that,' she snapped.

'Why?' Nick asked. 'It's what you are.'

'I'm not,' she insisted. 'It's just what they call me sometimes.'

'Yes,' Adalind agreed helpfully, 'while you're killing them and cutting off their heads.'

'I've never cut off anyone's head! And they all attacked me!'

'Really?' Adalind scrunched up her nose sceptically. 'Well, I suppose there's always time for a good beheading.'

'Yes,' Nick added dryly, 'you never forget your first beheading.' He heard how that sounded, considered that he was talking to a woman Adalind had tied to a chair and then said with a good deal of exasperation. 'Now it's feeling like a murder cabin.'

'Yes,' Adalind agreed guiltily. 'Sorry. But she just kept coming at me and it was tie her to a chair or kill her and I thought you might like the chance to talk to her before I demonstrated why it's a terrible idea to attack a hexenbiest.'

'I think she's picking that up, anyway.'

The young woman in the chair stared at them in disgust and asked, 'Are you _flirting_ right now?'

'I'd consider this more like witty banter,' said Adalind. 'Usually by this point in a good flirty conversation one of us is missing some clothes.'

'You're both crazy.'

'Possibly,' Adalind agreed cheerfully. 'But let's not forget who tried to kill who earlier shall we? Look, I've still got the knife you tried to stab me with!' She reached over to a side table and produced a large and dirty hunting knife. 'Very impressive.'

Nick found himself pinching the bridge of his nose. He didn't know whether to laugh or not. Either way, he thought he better take back control of the conversation before there really was a beheading. And Adalind already had a few of those under her belt, she didn't need another one.

'Look, why don't we start from the beginning,' he suggested. 'Do you know what she is?' he asked the woman, pointing at Adalind.

'Her face changed,' she admitted. 'I saw it when you two found that guy in the road.'

'She woged,' Nick explained. 'Adalind is a hexenbiest. A type of wesen. The man you killed in the road? He was another type of wesen: a blutbad. You and I, we're grimms. Traditionally we're supposed to hunt down wesen and kill them but I'm not really one for tradition. Not all wesen are bad just like not all people are bad. Do you understand?'

She didn't, not really, Nick could see that, but she was listening and that was a start. It was a long and tedious conversation that went back and forth multiple times while Nick and Adalind tried to explain that she wasn't crazy and that she couldn't just go around killing wesen and that of course they'd attacked her (assuming that part of her story was true), grimms were the bogeymen of wesen fairy tales – she'd scared them.

Adalind woged again at some point, demonstrated her powers at another, but what really calmed the woman down enough to give them her name (Theresa Rubel – she went by Trubel) were the pictures Adalind had on her phone of some of Nick's grimm books.

It took scrolling through every photo Adalind had – twice – before Trubel was calm enough that Nick untied her. He still half expected her to run but she didn't.

He wasn't sure whether he was glad or not. If she'd run, he could have given the sheriff a description, explained what had happened and possibly arrested her. But he couldn't do it, not when she really hadn't known what was happening to her. Nick remembered how disturbed and then freaked out he'd been when first he saw Adalind woge and then he met Monroe. Trubel, it turned out, had been seeing wesen since she was a kid and had never had anyone to explain to her what was happening and what she was seeing. Couple that with a few awful experiences in the early days and she'd turned into the typical bloodthirsty grimm.

He still wished he and Adalind could have enjoyed their honeymoon instead of picking up a stray grimm who they had to clear of murder charges and then educate on the ways of the wesen world.

On the upside, by the time they were done talking and Adalind had finished nerding out over the grimm books and her big plans for them, Trubel seemed a lot more comfortable in her own skin and a lot less likely to (attempt to) murder them in their sleep.

Traditionally, though, when you leave a honeymoon the additional person you bring back is a tiny group of cells dividing, not a full-grown woman in need of guidance and a place to stay.


	20. Chapter 20

**a/n:** Thanks for the wonderful reviews everyone!

 **Moment 20**

Once she'd gotten over the fact that half of Nick's friends were wesen, once she'd come to grips with the reality that she wasn't actually crazy and that as a grimm she could see a wesen's true nature even when they didn't want her to, Trubel was actually quite capable. Though still a little socially maladjusted. Which was good because Nick had spent the first few days after they'd brought her home worrying he'd come home to find she'd decided to embrace her nature and met a messy end at the hands of an incredibly hormonal hexenbiest.

And she truly was hormonal. It seemed as though Adalind had been treated to a rather smooth first trimester with minimal morning sickness just so that she could have a rather unpleasant fourth month in which nothing tasted right, she never quite knew what she was craving and she cried any time anyone said anything nice to her – Nick tried insulting her one day (apparently he'd been feeling rather suicidal) but it only resulted in an impressively snappy comeback that had actually made them both feel a little better. That's not to say he tried it again, he'd kind of like to live long enough to meet his daughter.

They were having a girl.

Nick had been right there with Adalind during every appointment, he'd been there for the results of the Harmony test that said that things looked good and that they were definitely having a girl. He'd gotten just as teary as Adalind when the technician brought out the ultrasound machine and they got to look at their little girl, so tiny (and honestly a little funny looking – though Nick didn't actually say that out loud) with hands and feet and the sound of her heartbeat a racing thrum in the background.

The both of them had still kind of been in a blissed-out daze when they arrived at the Spice Shop to finally share their news leading Rosalee to ask them if they'd been exposed to something.

'Yes,' Adalind explained rather cheerfully, 'a foetus!'

'A what?' Monroe asked, distractedly glancing down at them from the top of a ladder where he was stocking shelves.

Adalind produced an ultrasound picture and waved it around excitedly. 'A baby!'

Rosalee set aside the jar she'd been about to hand Monroe and moved toward Adalind so quickly Nick wasn't sure she didn't just blink and appear right in front of her. She reached for the picture, which Adalind gleefully handed her, and then after a moment of stunned (or maybe this time it was awed) silence, Rosalee wrapped her arms around Adalind in a tight hug and laughed.

'A baby!' she let go of Adalind to grab Nick up in a hug while Monroe finally caught up with the conversation and climbed down off the ladder to embrace Adalind.

'Congratulations,' Monroe offered and, unlike his somewhat dubiously offered cheer after their marriage announcement, this sounded genuine.

'Thank you, Monroe,' Adalind grinned, letting him move to hug Nick as she turned to Rosalee and the two studied the photo together.

'Wow,' he said to Nick quietly, and there was actual wonder in his voice, not concern, which Nick appreciated. He liked to think Monroe and Rosalee and moved well beyond their worries over Adalind but that didn't stop him from worrying they might not be supportive.

'Twelve weeks, we just had the check-up and our little girl is perfectly healthy.'

'A girl?' Rosalee smiled at them both. 'You're going to be parents.'

'Dude,' Monroe laughed lightly, 'you move fast.'

Nick shrugged. 'Why wait?' Nick questioned. 'Adalind's it for me, why not start the life I've always wanted?'

Nick didn't think he was imagining the way Monroe nodded thoughtfully with his eyes trained on Rosalee. Neither Monroe nor Rosalee had been in any kind of rush in their relationship, choosing to take things slow and steady – a blutbad and a fuchsbau were something of a rarity. Nick just got the feeling now that watching him with Adalind, watching them, well the aftermath, of them getting married and now that they were having a baby in a loft Nick had bought and Adalind had turned into a beautiful if slightly fortress-like home, was making Monroe wonder why exactly he and Rosalee were waiting.

'How did you know?' Monroe asked quietly, still watching Rosalee and Adalind who had moved back to the counter and seemed to be talking about herbs and teas that could help Adalind.

'What? That Adalind was the one?'

Monroe nodded. 'You thought it was Juliette once,' he pointed out.

Nick couldn't argue with that, but he could say, 'Did you know the first time I ever laid eyes on Adalind was about a minute after I bought Juliette that ring?'

Monroe shook his head.

'She was my first woge,' he told his friend, sure he'd at least told Monroe that much before. 'With Juliette there was always so much careful planning and considering the next move. I spent months deciding if I wanted to buy a ring, when I was going to propose, if I even should but with Adalind it was all just so easy.'

They watched both women for a little longer in silence before Nick realised he'd never actually gotten around to telling his friend just how this whole thing with Adalind had started. He wasn't sure if it would be enlightening or concerning but he supposed it might help explain just how different everything was between them.

'When Juliette and I first went out things were awkward but fun, you know? I was nervous about asking her out and a wreck on the first date because, I mean, she was a vet and I was the uniform who had to take her statement after a traffic accident. She was smart and it took me ages to work up the courage to ask her out because I didn't feel like I was in her league.

'Adalind is so much smarter than me but there wasn't ever any feeling like we weren't equals. Once I knew I was a grimm and that whole side of my life became this huge part of me, I realised Juliette didn't fit into my life, not the other way around. Adalind literally knocked on my door, told me we were having sex and gave me a list of compelling reasons why we should.'

Monroe snorted. 'What?'

Nick nodded. 'It was back when Catherine had just put Juliette in hospital. Adalind came to me with this plan to get her powers back. Apparently, she found this old ritual that said Blood of a Grimm could be countered with sex.'

'That explains some things.'

Nick smiled and shrugged. 'After that it was sort of easy to be around her, we've seen each other at our best and our worst and there's never any expectation to be something we're not. Adalind is the best thing that's ever happened to me and I'm not going to waste a second worrying over the fact that she once tried to kill my aunt – and me.'

Monroe nodded thoughtfully and Nick thought that was the end of the conversation but then his friend said, 'She's good for you.' He glanced at Nick and then back to Adalind. 'Something about watching the two of you together. She loves you and it's easy to see how much you love her too, I'm really happy for you, for both of you.'

'Thank, Monroe.'

There was another moment of comfortable silence before Monroe mused, 'Hexenbiest or grimm?'

Nick could only shrug and hope it was that simple.


	21. Chapter 21

**a/n:** I can't possibly apologise enough for abandoning this fic for so long. I never intended to take such a long break from writing (and i mean anything, until the last week I've not been able to get more than a sentence on page). I hope this chapter makes up for it a little. I appreciate each and every one of you for sticking with me on a such a long break, you guys are the best.

 **Moment 21**

As if to prove Adalind's point, his cell phone started to ring and she had to reach across to dig it out of his pocket. She copped a bit of a feel while she was at it and he thought that little bit of fun might have undermined her point a little but not enough for her to be wrong about how the handsfree convenience of Bluetooth would be nice to have in his car. Along with all the other safety features his old Land Cruiser was seriously lacking.

It hadn't occurred to him until they'd been looking at cars to replace Adalind's, how horribly unsafe his car was for their baby. Well, not unsafe exactly, but not exactly a modern marvel of safety technology. He had to admit, driving Adalind's new car was a bit of alright. A feeling he might have been a bit free admitting because now Adalind was on the warpath to get him to buy a new one – or to just sell it out from under him.

The thought that the Land Cruiser would be perfect for Trubel (and that it was mostly a pile of junk that they wouldn't get much for) seemed to be the only reason she hadn't sold it just yet. She didn't seem to think the added expense of a second new car on top of all the loft renovations was something worth worrying about. Although, he hadn't actually looked at any of the accounts she had or what she'd received as an inheritance after her mother's death. Nick got the feeling they really didn't need to be worrying about money.

Either way, he glanced over at Adalind and saw her frowning down at the caller ID on his phone. There was no picture coming up so either it was an unknown number or work related. He turned out to be wrong a moment later when Adalind, eyebrows quirked in confusion, tilted the phone so he could see the number.

It was Juliette.

Before he could tell her not to, Adalind swiped to answer and tapped the speaker button leaving him no choice but to speak. 'Burkhardt.' He hadn't meant to, but the bland greeting he used to answer his phone for work just sort of rolled off his tongue.

'Nick!' Juliette's voice was breathless, panicked, and he exchanged a wary look with Adalind.

'Juliette?' Again, he didn't mean to, but apparently his mouth had temporarily disconnected from his brain because he'd somehow managed to make her name a question, like he didn't immediately recognise her voice, like it didn't remind him of years spent together. Just because he didn't love her anymore, didn't mean he could forget the sound of her voice, especially when she sounded frantic and worried.

'Nick!' Juliette repeated, tone even more urgent now that she'd got him on the phone. 'They just broke in! I don't know what they want but there's something not right about them! I think… I think they're wesen but it's all wrong.'

He exchanged another look with Adalind. Juliette had never been one prone to panic before, even when the wesen weirdness had reared its head in her life she'd mostly stayed rational and calm. Whatever was happening wasn't something they could ignore and just advise her to call the police.

'Where are you?' Nick asked, this time he didn't think it mattered that his tone was all cop.

'Home,' she answered, and her voice dropped to a whisper that sounded strangled. 'I'm hiding in the closet in the bedroom.'

Another exchanged look with Adalind before Nick said, 'We'll be right there.'

Adalind ended the call and Nick changed lanes so he could make a different turn. This was not at all how he thought his night would go. He'd thought he and Adalind would continue arguing the merits of replacing his car (which he knew she'd win because every time he drove her knew car with its gloriously modern and comfortable interior, the smooth handling when it took corners and the marvellous ability to not violate road laws just to answer his phone, he weakened that little bit more) and then they'd go home, remind Trubel that sleep helped the body to function when they kicked her out of the library and possibly, if Adalind wasn't feeling too tired, have some spectacular sex (they were having to get creative now that Adalind didn't bend the way she used to but that didn't seem to be stopping them) and then sleep the deep satiated sleep of a couple who knew they didn't have to be anywhere early the next day.

Nowhere in his plans had there been room for rescuing his ex-girlfriend who he'd last seen – and spoken to for that matter – after she'd witnessed him cutting off a couple of heads in a rage after they'd threatened Adalind. In the months since he broke things off with her the most contact they'd had was through a lawyer friend of Adalind's and now he was going to be busting into the house he'd once shared with her, pregnant wife on his heels, to rescue her from possible wesen madness.

No, this was not how he'd planned to spend his evening. At least when they pulled up outside his old house he could see the evidence something wasn't right. There'd been a strange and sort of mean thought in the very back of his mind that this was all a scheme to get him to come over and talk. It wasn't a particularly charitable thought, but it hadn't exactly been easy to convince Juliette he was serious about ending things. So, yes, he was a little relived to see the front door had been all but blasted off its hinges, that at least two panels of glass had been busted in the front window and there was a worried neighbour standing on the sidewalk at a safe distance, cell phone to her ear as she talked with a 911 operator.

The look he exchanged with Adalind this time contained both annoyance and relief. Annoyance for all the reasons he'd already considered and relief because, pregnant though she might be, Adalind was still a total badass and if he had to go bursting into a house with who knew how many angry attacking wesen she would always be his first choice. Monroe came in a very, very close second but he lacked the ability to throw people through walls without laying a finger on them which was wonderful for deniability when it came to police reports.

Nick was quick to flash his badge to the woman on the phone and direct her back to the safety of her own home before he led the way into the house. When he stepped through the broken front door, he didn't have his gun in hand – they'd been out for dinner and he was off duty – but he did have Adalind and he'd become pretty adept at securing a weapon off his attacker. Besides, he'd rather not have to write up the kind of report he'd need to for discharging his weapon off duty. He'd done that enough when it came to these wesen cases. Sooner or later someone other than Renard was going to start noticing.

Three steps into the house (and about the spot Adalind had first started undressing him) someone came charging out of the living room and tried to escape through the door by knocking them over. Nick dropped his shoulder and met the charge with a tackle, knocking the man down and barely even feeling the way Adalind's power went right over his head like a solid punch to hit the second man trying to flee.

It took him a moment to wrestle the first man into submission and by then Adalind had used the chord off a table lamp to tie the second man up. She winked at Nick when he stood and he couldn't help the slight uptick of his lips even as he surveyed the rest of the downstairs area with a cautious eye, straining his hearing for any sign there were more.

'Stay with these two,' Nick requested before he mounted the stairs and went to look for Juliette.

He found her, exactly where she said she would be, huddled in the corner of the closet. She had her phone gripped tightly in her hand and she shrank back from him when he opened the door. It didn't look like the two men had followed her into the bedroom, the destruction seemed to be limited to the downstairs.

His first impression didn't suggest it was anything more than an ordinary home invasion. Even as he took Juliette's hand and helped her to her feet, he couldn't help but wonder why she'd called him and not 911.

'Are you okay?' he asked, giving her a quick once over to see if they'd gotten a hold of her before she'd fled. He didn't see any obvious injuries.

Juliette nodded shakily. 'I managed to hide before they realised I was home.'

That begged the question of what she'd seen that had made her think this was wesen and not an ordinary crime.

'I got a look at their faces,' she told him. 'And one of them was freakishly strong.'

Before Nick could comment on that Adalind called his name up the stairs, followed by the question, 'Do you need me to come rescue you?'

Nick rolled his eyes and started for the door, calling back, 'No, there's no one else up here.'

He ignored the confused look Juliette shot at him as she slowly started to follow him out of the bedroom and down the stairs. Her steps were a little shaky and she hadn't loosened the grip she had on her phone, but Nick wasn't about to offer her any comfort. He still cared for her, but he didn't know whether his touch or words would be comforting or just an awkward reminder they'd broken up. It would definitely be awkward for him.

When he stepped off the stairs, he found Adalind kneeling next to the man she'd tied up. Apparently, she'd knocked them both out when he'd moved up the stairs, and now she was peeling back the man's eyelids to get a good look at his eyes. She didn't look up when he moved up behind her to peer at the man over her shoulder just made an interested sound that told him whatever she was looking at wasn't normal.

Whether or not that abnormality was something he could see or just part of her fancy hexenbiest power was another thing entirely.

'They're definitely wesen,' she confirmed. 'And there's definitely something not right about them.' She held her hand out without looking at him, still frowning down at the man she'd first tied up, and Nick reached out and tugged her to her feet.

Once she was up, they switched places and he crouched down to see if he could see what she'd seen. He couldn't, not exactly, but he knew something wasn't right, he hadn't seen pupils like that on anyone who wasn't deeply drug affected. Strange to see it on two wesen who'd been rational enough to break into a house known to belong to a Grimm.

He should probably get Bud to start shopping the rumour around that he didn't live there anymore. He didn't want anyone knowing where he did live but it would be a lot safer for Juliette if they knew for a fact he wasn't living with her anymore.

'Drugs?' he asked Adalind after he'd checked both men and stood to face her. He was aware of Juliette watching them with confusion. Her shaking seemed to have subsided but she still didn't seem to know how to handle this new situation.

Adalind shook her head. 'I don't think so.' She considered her words for a moment and then tried to explain. 'There's a taste in the air and I don't mean a taste like that time Rosalee had that customer who was bespelled, it's more intangible. I think this is something more along my kind of power than pharmaceuticals.'

Nick nodded, that could mean any number of things were responsible for what they'd witnessed.

'It's Adalind, right?' Juliette suddenly spoke up. 'We met that one time; you were with Hank.'

Adalind's nose wrinkled and Nick frowned. Neither of them particularly liked the reminded of her time with Hank but it didn't have much to do with the fact that she'd slept with his work partner so much as it had to do with the reason she'd done it. Her whole fake relationship with Hank hadn't been of her choosing and that always made him mad and had him wanting to hit Renard.

'Yes,' Adalind eventually answered. Succinct and not inviting further comment but Juliette was observant when she wanted to be and apparently tonight was one of those nights because she seemed bound and determined to keep asking questions until she learned an answer he knew she wouldn't like.

'You're a lawyer? Hank and Nick met you on a case they were working.'

This caused Adalind to grin and Nick knew things were about to get awkward fast. 'Oh, Nick and I met before that when I tried to kill Marie.'

It took a moment for Juliette to realise that Adalind wasn't lying, not helped by Nick who simply rolled his eyes with a fond sort of huff. When she did realise Adalind was being truthful she stuttered out an alarmed, 'What?'

Adalind waved her hands dismissively. 'Long story and I guess we kind of met before that too though I'm not sure it counts as meeting when he was just staring at me and we did kind of freak each other out.' She seemed kind of thoughtful for a moment. 'Huh, guess you really are never getting rid of me.'

Nick grinned. 'We did tend to run into each other a lot.'

Adalind smiled in return, her wide happy smile that told him she liked that his mind had gone along the exact same train of thought as hers and come to the weird (romantic) conclusion that they were clearly destined for each other. He could be a sap when he wanted to be and scary hexenbiest or not, she was a romantic at heart.

There was a moment of silence and then Juliette inhaled sharply. 'You're together.'

Nick looked over at her with a frown. 'We got married a couple of months ago.'

'You _what_?!'

'I'm also pregnant,' Adalind volunteered. 'Just in case the belly had somehow escaped your notice.'

The moment she said it, Juliette's eyes narrowed in on the gentle swell of Adalind's stomach. There was no way Juliette had missed it originally, but it hadn't really meant anything to her until all of the pieces were shoved in front of her. She'd never had much time to get to know the wesen side of Nick's life, after all, and the way Adalind had talked so matter of fact about her kind of power leant to the obvious conclusion Nick had bought her along for her wesen knowledge. That didn't have to mean they were together; they could have just been working together like he did with Monroe and Rosalee.

Nick had come to learn over the last year that if there was one thing he was sure of, it was that he and Adalind were never going to be "just" anything. She was always a huge part of his life even if that was because she was wreaking havoc in it.

'Is this why you broke up with me?' Juliette eventually managed to ask. 'Were you cheating on me?'

Well that was a question Nick could have done without ever being asked because he had to be honest here, sparing Juliette's feelings wasn't going to help. 'Technically the sex was part of a ritual designed to return her powers.'

'A sex ritual.' The blank way Juliette spoke, the way she couldn't seem to stop looking between them might have, once upon a time, made him feel guilty. Now whatever guilt there might have been was lost to the knowledge that he was exactly where he was supposed to be – in a loving supportive relationship with someone who was his equal, someone who could meet him in the middle, someone who could push him and who he could push in return to be just that little bit more, to be that slightly better happier version of themselves.

'Yes.'

'I,' Juliette paused and then she shook her head. 'I don't understand your life at all.' She looked down at the two wesen tied up on the floor, at Adalind who seemed completely at ease with the situation and at Nick. She looked at Nick for a long time before she managed to say, 'That's why you broke up with me. I could try to understand, I did try to understand, but this life, it's not, it's never going to be easy for me to think "sex ritual" and not find that weird and wrong and I just don't know how to deal with this right now.'

'Why don't you go upstairs and we'll deal with the cops when they get here,' Adalind suggested softly.

Juliette didn't respond just turned and walked back up the stairs. Once she was safely out of ear shot Nick turned to Adalind and she raised a brow.

'Yes, alright,' he conceded, 'I probably could have left out the sex ritual.'

Adalind grinned. 'At least you didn't tell her we did it right here on the floor.'

At that, he could only laugh.


	22. Chapter 22

**a/n:** Thanks for the lovely reviews!

 **Moment 22**

There was a shift, like a switch being flicked in his head, and suddenly all his thoughts made sense again. Each little idea and urge had a corresponding reasoning, another trail of thoughts leading to and from the action and Nick could finally think clearly.

Clarity of thoughts only bought confusion, though, because he was standing in a barn with his back to Adalind, knees bent and ready to attack. He thought he might have been growling. He straightened up suddenly and the people in front of him – his friends, Juliette and Renard – all took a hasty step back. As they did, he became aware of soft fingers in his hair at the base of his neck and his suddenly functional brain connected the sensation to Adalind's fingers.

Nick shook his head, trying to clear the fog from his mind. Clearing the fog, however, along with the renewed ability to think clearly, bought with it a whole host of aches and pains and some very bizarre memories that all mashed together in his mind like a silent horror film. There were flashes of people, places, the sensation of falling and a rage so consuming it had eclipsed everything. Well, almost everything, he had the distinct memory of trying to find Adalind at some point but that had been accompanied by an overwhelming sense of possession and belonging.

Which actually wasn't all that new, it had just seemed so very _there_.

He blinked, shook his head again and then wondered aloud, 'Why is nothing in colour?'

His words took his friends by surprise, Nick could clearly see the way Monroe's mouth was hanging slack, his eyes wide. 'What?' he gaped.

Nick lifted his arm to investigate a weird itching he'd only then become aware of – there seemed to be a lot of sensation to catalogue, he didn't remember ever being as aware of his body before – only to discover that even with all of the colour dulled his skin was a sickly colour. He wanted to assign the colour grey to it but given everything was currently a scale of grey he couldn't be sure.

He sighed, all of the images connecting in his mind until they all painted a picture that didn't quite make sense but seemed to be logical all the same. 'Did I become a zombie?'

Juliette made some sort of strangled noise in her throat but he didn't pay it much attention because Rosalee was looking rather fascinated, if a little disturbed, and Adalind's fingers had started a gentle scratching motion that was making him want to purr like a cat – a fact he would not be acknowledging out loud in front of their friends thank you very much.

'Uh, Nick,' Wu spoke slowly, 'I think you're still a zombie.'

'Oh.' Nick considered this for a beat and then, without really deciding on it, shook himself like a dog. It didn't last long but when he'd stopped the world was in colour again and he could see the skin of his arms was a nice healthy colour again. 'That better?'

This time, the strangled noise came from Rosalee but that was a little hard to focus on because Adalind's fingers had fallen away when he'd shaken off whatever affliction had come over him and she was moving around to his side. He turned to face her finding her in full woge and looking quite smug.

'How did you do that?' Rosalee asked, voice strangled. He felt her approach and turned to look at her. She flinched in surprise but when he made no move to attack her, she approached him again. He had to endure her poking his cheek with a finger and peering closely into his eyes. 'We didn't even give you the antidote.' She held up a nasty looking syringe he remembered her using back in the shop on one of the first victims they'd encountered.

Things were starting to come back to him and now, with first-hand experience of the wesen who did this, Nick could see the connection between the slightly wild wesen who had broken into Juliette's house looking for him and the man with the cane who had spit in his face to turn him into a zombie. Mind you, there was a huge difference between the rage Nick had been feeling and the aggression all the other people had been displaying but looking back over his actions, he thought that rage might have been because he was more himself just with the restraint gone.

Nick didn't have an answer for Rosalee but Adalind did. She shook off her woge and smiled widely. 'He won't need it,' she explained, still looking and sounding quite smug. 'He didn't succumb like the others.'

'It sure looked like he did,' Monroe pointed out.

Nick shrugged but Adalind wasn't finished with her explanation. 'Maybe, but he could have shaken it off at any time.'

'Then why didn't he?' Renard asked. 'Why the plane crash? Why the bar fight?'

'Adalind,' Nick could answer that one.

This time Adalind looked at him quite fondly. 'He was making his way back to Portland,' she explained. 'As soon as we caught up with him, he shook it off.'

'Yes,' Rosalee agreed, 'but how?'

At this Adalind looked a little embarrassed but she went on to explain, 'Nick and I have performed a lot of blood and sex magic. It's tied us together more deeply than just exchanging vows and making a baby ever could.'

Rosalee's eyebrows shot up. She wasn't the only one giving them a raised brow, Monroe looked bemused, Renard disgusted (if not a little jealous) and Juliette, Hank and Wu looked confused if a little alarmed.

'He used his blood to take away my power, I used sex to get it back and there have been other things since then.' Adalind became a little sheepish and Nick tried not to feel embarrassed that they were discussing their sex life with his friends – and his ex. 'There were a lot of rituals and spells I always wanted to try but I've never had a real partner before now to try them with.'

If Nick got a nice thrill from her saying that right in front of Renard, well he didn't think anyone would hold that against him.

'What kind of rituals and spells?' Rosalee asked, intrigued, she was looking at Nick and Adalind in a whole new light, as though she'd finally understood something about their relationship that hadn't made sense to her until then.

Adalind turned pink, it was such an unexpected reaction from the normally unruffled woman that Rosalee smiled widely. Nick rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably and coughed into the suddenly awkward silence.

'We'll talk,' Rosalee told Adalind leaving Nick in the certain knowledge that Rosalee was going to come away from that conversation with far more knowledge about his and Adalind's bedroom activities than he'd ever wanted her to know.

'Anyway,' Adalind shook off her embarrassment and smiled, 'all that blood and sex magic flowing back and forth seems to have made him immune to certain influences – at least when he's in contact with me.'

Up until that moment, Nick hadn't realised that was a perk of his and Adalind's bedroom shenanigans. He wasn't about to complain, though. Well, maybe a little, he really didn't want to know how long he was going to get teased about this once the current crisis had been dealt with. There was a wealth of material to be had from this knowledge and he didn't see that Monroe, Hank or Wu were about to let it go any time soon.

He'd handle the ribbing. After all, he didn't think either of them would be able to shake off something as powerful as he had just because their wife was standing right there with her fingers in their hair.


	23. Chapter 23

**a/n:** Thanks for all the reviews! This chapter is unedited, I apologise.

 **Moment 23**

There are certain people you just don't expect to run into at a police station and that list certainly included his own mother. Least of all because, last he'd heard from her, she was somewhere in Europe seeking out a way to destroy the coins. He could have gone into a long list of reasons that eventually would come to include the fact that she was supposed to be dead and that even after all this time he was a little unclear, legally speaking, where she stood in the world.

Also, because he'd been all set to have a nice lunch with Adalind and last his mother had seen his wife she'd been far from his wife and he'd been taking a knife in the shoulder to protect her moments after his mother had killed her mother.

Also, there was the whole rather obviously pregnant thing.

Later, when Hank oh so helpfully set the scene for Monroe and Rosalee, he would describe the moment Kelly Burkhardt came looking for her son with a suspicious amount of glee. Nick had been leaning back in his chair, Adalind leaning against his desk, standing between his knees and he'd just leant forward again to press a tender kiss to Adalind's belly when his mother had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and said his name in a sharp reprimand that had startled him enough he'd sent his chair flying back on its rollers in his haste to stand up.

To be fair to him, he hadn't heard his mother use that tone of voice since he was a kid and it seemed he was still hardwired to respond to it. Also, to be fair to him, he recovered from the strange urge to apologise for doing something wrong before he'd managed to get a word out. Which didn't help him face down his mother in any case because she was eyeing him with one eyebrow raised in sharp question and even if he was standing somewhat protectively in front of Adalind (much as he had been the last time his mother had seen her) it was a little hard to disguise the fact that she'd interrupted him kissing a pregnant woman's belly.

Which really begged the question why he hadn't yet gotten around to first telling his mother he'd broken up with Juliette, second married Adalind and third, she was soon to be a grandmother. And maybe that might have had something to do with her complete lack of motherly behaviour over the last twenty years.

He wasn't bitter. Did he sound bitter?

'Hi,' he said when the surprise wore off an he remembered he was a grown man, a homicide detective. And a grimm. A big axe wielding (sometimes a stolen scythe wielding) terrifying to lots of wesen grimm.

His mother completely ignored him and glanced over his shoulder at Adalind to say, 'Daughter-in-law?'

'Carrying your grandchild,' Adalind added helpfully. 'Please don't try and kill me again.'

His mother sighed. 'I suspected when he took that knife for you this was going to happen.'

'You did?' Nick found himself asking.

His mother rolled her eyes. 'You took a knife for her, Nick, subtlety wasn't exactly part of that exchange.'

He nodded. 'Fair point. Why are you here? Is someone trying to kill you again?'

This time his mother looked a little sad when she said, 'No. I thought it was time I came home.'

'Home,' Nick repeated incredulously. 'What home?'

'The one where my son and daughter-in-law are going to be raising my grandchild. Evidently.'

Nick studied her carefully, looking for any hint she might be covering something up. He wanted to believe her, wanted to believe she truly was coming home for good because he would like the chance to get to know her again, to show off Adalind and watch his daughter getting to have a grandparent, but he couldn't shake the feeling that his mother's return to Portland was heralding something big and bad.

She hadn't known about her grandchild after all. And she'd never given him any reason to believe he himself was reason enough for her return.

Adalind seemed to be of the same opinion because she huffed, 'There's going to be murder and mayhem and I am just too pregnant for this.' Her next words were directed at his mother and although they were sharp and unforgiving, they likely served to earn her points in his mother's eye. 'You kill whoever you have to but either you do it before my daughter is born or you get the hell out of Portland.'

His mother looked to him but he was inclined to agree with Adalind on this one. 'We have enough to deal with. Without you bringing something else down on our heads. If you really did come here for family and a home that's great but the second you start putting my family in danger I'm putting you on the next bus out of here.'

She studied him for a moment before she gave a final sharp nod.

He smiled. 'It's good to see you, Mom.'

She smiled back.


End file.
